


To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

by astudyinrose



Series: To Sleep, Perchance to Dream [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, BBC Sherlock – Freeform, Drama, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, POV First Person, POV John Watson, POV Sherlock Holmes, Post Reichenbach, Post-The Reichenbach Fall, References to Shakespeare, References to Suicide, Reichenbach Angst, Sherlock Holmes Returns after Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-15
Updated: 2013-07-15
Packaged: 2017-12-20 05:53:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/883705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astudyinrose/pseuds/astudyinrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After The Fall, John lives in a haze. The world feels empty, and he lives day to day only marking the passage of time. Harry died in questionable circumstances only a few weeks after Sherlock, and now he has no one left. That is, until he finds Sherlock's phone- the phone Sherlock had thrown down on the roof before he fell, but had mysteriously disappeared. Starting with an unsent text, John finds a string of Shakespearan clues that he thinks were left by Sherlock, leading him to a way to clear Sherlock's name... but he gets more than he bargained for. Meanwhile, Sherlock is hunting down Moran and his web of spiders all over Europe, yet he can't seem to stop thinking about John.</p><p>Part I of II. [For Part II see What Dreams May Come by astudyinrose]</p><p>From both John's and Sherlock's POV.  Rated T for some language and suicide references.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

* * *

 

 

To be, or not to be, that is the question:  
Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer  
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,  
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,  
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep  
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end  
The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks  
That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation  
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,  
To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there's the rub,  
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,  
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,  
Must give us pause...

_-W. Shakespeare, Hamlet_

 

* * *

_I step out of the cab just as my phone starts to ring. Sherlock. I breathe a sigh of relief. Moriarty hasn’t gotten to you yet, then, or you are holding him at bay. The fake distress call to help Mrs. Hudson has not waylaid me enough to find you in time._

_“Hello,” I answer._

_“John,” is all you say._

_“Sherlock, you okay?” I ask, starting to trot towards the hospital entrance._

_“Turn around and walk back the way you came,” you say._  

_“No, I’m coming in,” I start to argue, but you interrupt, “Just! Do as I ask.” You sound strange, like your voice is half-strangled. As if you were crying, but the self-proclaimed sociopath Sherlock Holmes doesn’t cry._

_“Please,” you gasp desperately, so I obey. When I have walked back to where the cab dropped me off, you tell me to stop, look up, because you are on the rooftop._

_“Oh, god,” I murmur._

_“I-I can’t come down, so we will just have to do it like this,” you say._

_“What’s going on?”_

_“An apology.” You pause.  “It’s all true.” And then you tell me that you are a fraud. That you had lied to me, to everyone, and that you had invented Moriarty. That everything we had done, everything we had shared, was an elaborate hoax. That you were a fake._

_“Tell anyone who will listen to you… that I created Moriarty, for my own purposes,” you say, glancing backwards. I start to get angry, and I tell you to shut up. I tell you that I don’t believe you, that you knew everything about me, about Harry, from one glance._   


_“Nobody could be that clever,” you say._

_“You could,” I respond, without hesitation. I can hear your half-laugh, half-gasp through the phone at my show of solidarity, but it sounds like a death rattle. I can hear your despair now. You tell me that it was research, just a magic trick, but I am hardly able to hear it anymore, my teeth are grinding against each other and there is a roaring in my ears. The indomitable Sherlock Holmes, crying._

_I feel my stomach starting to clench, realizing (how did it take me this long?) why you would be on the edge of the roof. No, you wouldn’t! Sherlock! Without realizing it, I start walking towards you, but you repeat desperately not to move, to stay where I am. I put my hand up, surrendering, as you say in a panicked voice, “Keep your eyes fixed on me! Please, will you do this for me? This phone call--it’s my note. What people do, don’t they? Leave a note.”_

_I take the phone from my ear briefly, unable to believe what I am hearing. “Leave a note when?” I gasp._

_Finally, you say, “Goodbye, John,” and I stutter, “No… don’t.”_

_But you don’t hear my protestations, you aren’t holding the phone to your ear anymore. I am screaming now, “Sherlock!” You throw the phone away, and in agonizing slow motion, yet with an astounding amount of grace, you swan dive off the roof, and you’re falling, falling…_

“Sherlock!” I scream, again, but I'm not in the street at St. Bart’s Hospital. I'm not running towards a motionless Sherlock, surrounded by a halo of his own blood. I'm in my bed, in my tiny monochromatic flat. Covered in a sheen of cold sweat. Judging by the dim street light coming through my small window, it is still the middle of the night. It has been three weeks since… that day. I swing my feet to the floor, resting my elbows on my legs and cradling my head in my hands. I've had the nightmare so many times. Always the same, like a film playing over and over in my head. I see him fall, again and again, and I'm never able to save him. Sometimes, I wake up just as Sherlock starts to jump, others when I feel his wrist and can’t find a pulse. 

I always wake up screaming. 

I should be having nightmares about Harry instead of Sherlock. I did just bury her yesterday, after all. But I wasn’t there when she died, I didn’t witness it. My brain must be jumbling up all the grief and loss into one. I should try not to think about that.

I know I won’t be able to fall back asleep. I get up, put on yesterday’s jumper and trousers, grab my keys and leave my pathetic flat. As I close the door behind me, I gather the collar of my jacket around my neck, my breath billowing in the winter air. It’s bloody cold out. _Amazing deduction_ , Sherlock would have said.  _Your wit is starting to outmatch Anderson’s._ I snort, shaking my head. I walk. I’m vaguely aware that my limp is back, but I didn’t bring my cane. I haven’t used it in so long that I am not even sure where it is.  I’m sure Sherlock would think that the limp’s return was ‘ _fascinating_ ,’ and start doing some kind of psychological experiment on me. 

I head through the empty dark streets, not sure of where I am going. Still lost in the nightmare. Seeing him fall, again and again. _Keep your eyes fixed on me, John._

I still see Molly walking towards me, in the hospital waiting room, with that look in her eyes—the one my commanding officer had when he was about to tell us that one of our mates had been killed in action. Molly trying to help me stay upright as I collapsed to the floor, before she had spoken a word. I knew what that look meant. I couldn’t breathe. It was like someone had punctured both my lungs, or at least that I had been shot again. The pain from being shot had been less severe. 

Then the call, a few weeks later, from Lestrade, telling me that they had found Harry’s body. It didn’t feel real, it couldn’t be. My hand dropped, the phone fell to the floor. The pain made me double over. 

I wince, and pick up the pace to outrun the memories. I'm not really aware of where I'm going until I get there. Staring at it from across the street.

221B Baker Street. I must have been walking for almost an hour without noticing.

The wind whispers around me. I imagine that I can hear your voice. _Sentiment, John. I’m dead. This does you little good and me even less._

“I know, Sherlock,” I say aloud. I have no idea why. Must be sleep deprivation. I pull my coat tighter around me, wishing I had worn a warmer one. I should go back to my tiny flat and try to sleep again. But I can’t. I'm drawn towards the black polished door like a magnet, like I was first drawn to Sherlock all those months ago in the lab. Once I have reached the threshold, I pull out my old key. Mrs. Hudson hasn’t asked for me to return it yet. At Harry’s funeral, she said something about renting out the apartment, but quickly said there was no rush once she saw the look on my face. It makes no sense for it to be vacant, and I can’t stand to live there anymore.  But the idea of anyone other than Sherlock pacing through the rooms makes my stomach clench.

I hesitate a moment on the stoop, then slide the key into the familiar lock and turn it. I open the door, enter, and close out the cold, black night behind me. 

In the dark foyer, I pause. The air smells the same: like Mrs. Hudson’s baking, a bit of musty undertone from the old wallpaper, and just a hint of chemicals and burned tissue from Sherlock’s experiments. _Of course it does, why would it be different?_ _It’s only been a few weeks._ I’m standing right where Sherlock and I stood, leaning up against the wall to catch our breaths after my first chase. The first time I forgot about my limp. _That had been an experiment of yours, hadn’t it?_ I shake my head to clear away the ghosts. The air is laden with the fact that there are no current inhabitants—like a thick velvet carpet, static, unmoving. Sherlock was always swirling the air, pacing, playing the violin, sweeping down the stairwell.

I start up the stairs, walking gingerly so as not to wake Mrs. Hudson. As I get to the top, I exhale deeply.  I didn’t realize I had been holding my breath.

It looks eerily the same.  Mrs. Hudson hadn’t removed anything other than the science equipment, and I hadn’t wanted any of the furniture (not to mention the fact that it would remind me of Sherlock, it wouldn’t fit in my flat anyway). The couch was still there, with an indent on the cushion and pillow. As if Sherlock had just been lying there with his hands steepled under his chin, but had gotten a text from Lestrade and had rushed off to a crime scene. _As if you were just here_.

 _Do keep up, John_. A shiver runs down my spine. His voice sounded so real, almost like he were in the room with me. Like the figure I imagined on the couch had said the words, frustrated with me as usual. I shake my head. Hallucinations. _Talking_ hallucinations. Brilliant. Another psychological malady to add to the list.

I walk quietly down the hall, nudging the door open to Sherlock’s room.  I had only been in there a few times, when Sherlock was incapacitated and couldn’t put himself to bed—such as during the Irene Adler incident. It was much the same as it was then. The Egyptian cotton sheets on the bed were still tussled. _You never were the kind of person to make your bed, were you, Sherlock_ , I think. _In fact, you would hardly ever sleep in here anyway. That is, when you slept at all. You went through your mania during a case, then collapsed afterwards._

 _Transport, John,_ you would say, your lanky form leaning against the doorway, arms crossed, aloof. I smile slightly, less perturbed by the voice this time. I wonder if I imagine you more clearly here, in our flat. _It’s not ours anymore, John._

There is hardly anything in the room. A periodic table on the wall. A chest of drawers. Most of the rest of the room is filled with neat stacks of books; scientific tomes, laboratory manuals, but there are (surprisingly) many literature books as well. _I don’t think I remember you ever reading for pleasure_. I walk over to one of the stacks and pick up the top volume, dusting off the front cover. It is a volume of The Complete Works of Shakespeare. _Really Sherlock? Certainly this is sentiment at best_. I flip through it. _Case. Research_. You would say absentmindedly, while typing a text furiously.  I wonder what Shakespeare could possibly have to do with a murder case, but I give up trying to make that particular deduction. 

I drop the book on the floor, wincing at the loud thud. Hopefully Mrs. Hudson is sound asleep.  I walk over to the closet, which is still open. All of Sherlock’s many tailored suits are still hanging here innocuously, as if nothing had happened. _But something did happen. Your life ended._ I finger a sleeve. _Sentiment, John_ , you say. I sigh, exhausted.

Closing the closet door, I pull off my shoes and jacket and fall onto Sherlock’s bed. It never occurs to me to go up to my old room. The pillow still smells like him, his shampoo... with an undercurrent of formaldehyde. _Bloody hell, I hope that doesn’t mean you had body parts on the bed at some point._ I pull the quilt around myself, as if to wrap myself in Sherlock. Maybe that will keep the nightmares away. _Sentiment,_ I think I hear you say again, as I finally drift off just as the birds begin to chirp in the new day…

* * *

 

John leaves his flat and limps down the street. Limp pronounced. Shoulders hunched. Nocturnal mobility: nightmares have returned. Belt loop: two notches less than when I last saw him. Has lost at least a stone. I frown.

He continues to limp away, his footsteps echoing noisily down the street. I am concealed behind a telephone box. Once he has reached a reasonable distance, I follow. I pull my collar up and straighten my scarf against the wind.

Walks at a reasonable pace considering the limp. Psychosomatic ailment returned. Possible source: Harry’s death. _Or my own._ _  
_

I deduce his destination almost immediately. He is almost there. I have not been back since… the roof. Too dangerous, Moriarty’s men could still be monitoring it. I keep back enough to watch his movements. Once John reaches Baker Street, he stops.  His small frame shivers as he stares at the building intently. I have a sudden urge to comfort him. Strange. Must be my desire to counteract return of his PTSD. Still, it would have been better to have saved him this additional pain, the loss of Harry.

“I know, Sherlock,” he says out loud. I start. He can’t possibly see me. I peek around the corner.  Eyes closed, shoulders slumped: sleep deprivation, poor nutrition. Delusions if not hallucinations. Speaking aloud to a memory of me? John takes a deep breath, and walks over to the door. After a moment’s hesitation, he enters the flat. No lights: doesn’t want Mrs. Hudson to be aware of his visit. 

The last time I had seen John was when he was standing by my grave, the first time he came after I had been “buried.” He had no idea that I was standing mere yards away. _You see, but you don’t observe, John._ He asked me for a miracle. To not be dead. _I am trying John._ I should be gone. Everything is ready. But I needed to check his condition. The deaths of two people close to him in a few weeks. No wonder his PTSD has returned.

Mycroft thinks it’s a foolish mission, impossible. Untrue. Possibility of full success: range from 53-57%. Maybe 56%.

An hour passes. No reemergence likely before dawn.

 _Goodbye, John._ I turn briskly and walk back the way I came, my wool coat billowing behind me and my shoes echoing on the pavement.  _One more miracle, Sherlock_ , he said. _I promise, John._ But first I have work to do.

* * *

 

 _We are running down the street. Moriarty is chasing us. He is trying to finish us once and for all. It infuriates him that we have slipped through his bony grasp yet again. Our hands are handcuffed together. You grasp my hand in yours as we keep running…_  

I wake up, murmuring something under my breath. I don’t know where I am at first. My old battle reflexes flare up and every muscle in my body tenses.  Then I remember: I’m in Sherlock’s room. I relax. That wasn’t quite a nightmare.  In fact, it was almost a pleasant memory, if a jumbled one. I wonder if being here had something to do with it. But I shouldn’t be here. It’s like an alcoholic returning to the bottle. I would know, I saw Harry do it often enough. The guilt lines were etched permanently on her face, even in death. Even though we often didn’t get on, and I hadn’t seen her in months, I loved her. She was all the family I had left. At the funeral, all I could think about was how I should have been there, should have protected her.

I hadn’t heard from her in weeks, but that wasn't abnormal. I was even angry with her for not being there for me when Sherlock died. Then she had fallen down some stairs while drunk. Died in a back alley, alone, bleeding out. Just before it happened, she had tried to call me, but I had ignored it. I might not have been able to save her, but the guilt clenches my stomach nonetheless. I can’t think about how I failed her, in the end.

I'm not willing to move yet. I'm still ensconced in the duvet, still surrounded by Sherlock’s smell—but even that's starting to fade. _No, don’t leave again, Sherlock._ The waves of guilt, loss, and remorse are starting to wash over me again. I close my eyes, remembering the feeling of his hand in mine. It felt so real a moment ago, even though my brain had interspersed a true memory into a distorted dream. That night wasn’t that long before... it happened. We were on the run from Lestrade and we grabbed each others’ hands as we ran. “Now people are definitely going to talk,” I had said, laughing as we ran.

After a few more minutes, I realize that if I don’t leave somewhat soon, I'll run into Mrs. Hudson and have to explain why I'm at 221B at this time in the morning. She probably wouldn’t mind; in fact, she would make me tea and try to comfort me about Harry. After all, who loses their best friend _and_ their sister within a month? I better get used to people trying to take care of me. And telling them to bugger off. 

I came back here to ground my sanity, I suppose. The flat was the focal point of my former life, what my universe had orbited around.  221B Baker Street and Sherlock. This was the hub of our world. Everything else has disappeared, the other foci of my life—Harry, cases, even the surgery. Baker Street still feels like home, even if it causes a dull ache in the center of my chest. 

I finally get up, picking up my shoes, and tiptoe down the hallway to the carpeted living room. I glance around once more, drinking it all in. For all I know, this could be the last time I see Baker Street. The morning sunlight is slanting through the front window, dust motes swirling in the light. It all looks so ordinary, so banal. Like any other morning. But it’s all wrong. It should look like a battlefield, like death had come here and ripped apart the fabric of our lives.

I walk over to the bookcase, taking in all the volumes, the strange jars of unknown substances. I stop at the shelf where Sherlock kept his violin, near the window. The case has a thin layer of dust on it. I brush some of it off with my hands. Open the case. The violin lays there, silent, unassuming. Waiting to make music through nimble fingers. But it will never make music again. My mind flashes back to a New Year’s Eve, when Sherlock played _Auld Lang Syne_ in this very spot as the clock struck twelve. I shut the case with a loud snap.

* * *

  

I stand on the corner of a dark street, the rain-damp cobblestones gleaming in the light of the streetlamps. Stalking a spider. One of Moriarty’s spiders. Waiting to see if he will lead me back to his web. Right now, he's standing outside a bar, chatting up a woman. Arms crossed, keeps looking over her shoulder: she’s not interested.

Return gaze to subject. Tall, muscular, almost bulky. Wearing an old leather jacket. Was his father’s, probably, due to the wearing on the elbows. Well cleaned and maintained: has pride in where he came from. Soot under his fingernails: coal miner. Accent: Bristol. What is an English coal miner doing in Prague? And how did he become part of Moriarty’s web?

I affect the stance of a drunk standing on the corner outside a bar, smoking a cigarette. My phone pings.

_I need to talk to you. –MH_

_Bugger off. I’m busy.  -SH_

_It’s important.  –MH_

_Just text it to me.  –SH_

_You’re incorrigible. Can you return to London? We should speak face to face.  –MH_

_Can’t. Prague. Chasing a spider. –SH_

_The Doctor is not doing well. It has been more than a year, and his limp is worse. And he ran out of money, but wouldn’t take any from me.  –MH_

_He will be fine. –SH_

_This is becoming an obsession, and you know you can never root out all of them, there are too many. And what if he realizes that it’s you, and that you are still alive? You lose the advantage. –MH_

_He won’t. –SH_

The man backs away from the woman, sheepishly, and starts to walk down the almost-empty street. I flick the remnants of my cigarette to the ground, and follow. 

* * *

 

_Am I becoming you, now, Sherlock? Thinking of the world as a machine with millions of little cogs constantly working, but no sentiment? Emotions are dangerous, sentiment is only a chemical defect felt by the losing side. You said that once. I understand now. I can’t let myself feel too much. It hurts._

After a few months of paying the rent for my tiny flat, my bank account is nearly empty. Despite Mycroft’s objections ( _I’ll be damned if I ever take money from you, Mycroft. You destroyed him),_ I get a job at St. Bart’s in order to make ends meet. “Are you sure you want to work here?” Molly had said. “Where… where it happened?” I clenched my jaw, giving her a steely gaze, and she had said nothing more.  She’s right, though. I am probably a masochist.

I work in the emergency room. The smell of disinfectant mostly covers the lingering smell of death that pervades any hospital, making it feel like limbo. But working again gives me a reason to think, to analyze a problem and then solve it. Like we used to with cases. Occupy my mind and my hands. People here don’t usually recognize me, which spares me the pitying looks. And the hospital never objects when I take up extra shifts, even sleeping in the on-call room more than a few times. I like working myself into an exhaustive sleep. I don’t want to go back to the tiny flat. If I go back there, I have the nightmares. 

The Fall. That’s what I call it, because “the fall” could never refer to anything else. It’s less frequent, but still the exact same nightmare, on repeat. Sometimes, now, Sherlock’s body on the ground transforms into Harry’s broken body, sprawled out, bleeding. As if my brain is still trying to puzzle out a detail, something that wasn’t quite right about her death. Their deaths. _You would have figured it out by now, Sherlock._ _You would have figured it all out months ago. But I can’t._ There probably isn’t anything to figure out anyway. They're dead. Gone.

I mostly avoid the lab and the morgue. That’s where I would see shadows of Sherlock everywhere.  There are safe zones, places where all I see is the patient and the task at hand. That’s my limbo.

Days. Weeks. Months pass. Slowly, like the ticking of a clock when you are watching the hands, willing it to go faster. _Tick, tick_. I categorize each day in my mind, like files in my memory. One week, two, three, four. Categorized, labeled. Filed. One month, two. Three. Four. Spring arrives. I watch it start to bloom, but only from an empirical perspective. It is part of the hollow passing of time. Bland, no emotion. The world is in shades of monochrome again, like when I had just come back from Afghanistan. The seasons pass much the same, in rhythm, like a dance. 

The first anniversary of your death comes. I visit your grave, leave flowers. This is the one place I never hear you speaking to me. But I ask you once more for a miracle. Then not long after, I visit Harry’s grave. Then another year. That was faster. Time has sped up. Flowers. The headstone is still so shiny, so polished, like new. Another file put away. Stored. You’re still gone. It’s like the whole world is holding its breath, or I'm in between life and death. I don’t mind. Limbo is easier.

Once in a while, Greg or Mike asks me out for a drink. I go, but I barely hear what they say. In the background, I only hear the slow ticking away of time. Tick, tick.

I still talk to you in my head. I still imagine you, striding down the street with your coat billowing behind you. I can’t help it. London is full of memories of you, waiting to pounce on me. Every so often, every few months, I think I actually see you out of the corner of my eye. Or the back of my neck prickles and I feel like your eyes are on me.  When I turn to look, no one is there.  Or I see someone who has your same build and height walking quickly in the opposite direction. It can’t be you— you would never wear a garish orange jumper and washed out jeans, and your hair is not a shock of blonde spikes. But my brain wants you to be there. The vision (hallucination?) of you that I imagine seems to evolve. As if my sheer will is bringing you to life. In a moment of weakness, I tell my therapist about it. She prescribes me an antipsychotic and sleeping pills. I don’t take them. I want to see you, even if it's not real.

More months go by. One day, I'm looking in a store window. Not really window shopping, just staring, not seeing.  If I had actually been looking at the objects in the window, I would not have seen... and there, _there_ —it can’t be. It’s must be my mind creating shadows of truth… but in the reflection I think I see the mop of curly hair, the angled cheekbones, the lanky figure ensconced in a long coat that is my Sherlock, just before it passes behind a food stall in the street. I close my eyes. Trying to will myself to stop shaking.

That night, I take the sleeping pills. I still wake up screaming as you fall. 

* * *

  

Coal mining town near Bristol. Center of another web. Moriarty’s organization is like a hydra.  Every time I cut off one head, three more grow in its place. Paris, Dublin, Madrid, Berlin. A blur.

I still have yet to find anyone who knows what happened to Moriarty. His second-in-command simply stepped up, took his place. He’s pulling the strings now. Just another spider.

The man I am interrogating now, tied to a chair in a sewer, has barely told me anything of use. I've barely scratched the surface.

My interrogation methods are not medieval, not physical torture; they are more direct, more useful. The subject is not delirious from pain and therefore less likely to shout out anything just to make the pain stop. I use a truth serum I concocted, which is injected into the bloodstream. Subject goes into a trance-like state. Added effect of memory loss, so the subject does not remember being interrogated. Much more reliable. The problem is that the subject tends to doze off. The human body is unbelievably frustrating. Unreliable at best, even for transport.

“Tell me again, where is your commander,” I ask.

“Don’t know. Always moves around.” His head is drooping in his drugged haze. 

“Where did you see him last?” 

“London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down!” He sings, smiling as if that were a personal joke. I need to ask the rest of my questions quickly. The serum must be putting him to sleep. 

“What were your orders?”

“Hmnhhh?” I grab his head, shaking him awake. 

“What were your orders?” I repeat. 

“Put it where he would find it.”

“Who would find what? Where?” _Answer me._

“At St. Bart’s. Evidence box.”

“What is it? Who? TELL ME.” I shake him again.

“Watson.”  

Subject drops into deep sleep. Must reconsider dosage and/or chemical makeup of serum.

* * *

 

Months have passed since the store window incident. I haven’t seen him again, not so vividly. But I still imagine him everywhere. I still don’t take the antipsychotics. 

I’m in the middle of my shift, but the emergency room has been too quiet for too long, and my safe-zone limbo is starting to crumble at the edges. I start to hear the whisper of Sherlock’s coat as if he is about to burst around the corner, quipping “John! Case!”

I need something to do. I go back to my small office. No unfinished paperwork. Just a file on my desk which has obviously been mis-delivered, and needs to be taken to the morgue, to Molly. I could send my assistant to do it… but I realize that I haven't seen Molly in a long time despite our mutual workplace. _1 year, 2 months, 6 days, to be exact, John_ , my hallucination of you says. _Not today, Sherlock. Leave me be_. You raise one eyebrow, yet remain silent, evaluating me with those catlike heterochromatic eyes. _She must have been avoiding me too,_ I think. _True,_ you say.

I don’t know if I can do it, though. I stop, holding the side of my desk. Trying to breathe.  _Really, John. You went to war, you can walk into a laboratory without shattering to pieces._ You’re right. As usual. So I go downstairs, brace myself, and limp into the lab.

I am flooded by memories of you, and I exhale sharply. This is where we met. That stool is where you were sitting when you first deduced everything about me from a single sharp glance. I was standing there, with my cane. That’s the door you leaned on as you winked at me, quickly disappearing to get your riding crop from the morgue. _Why was your riding crop in the morgue? I never asked._ I half expect to see you, now, bent over a microscope, analyzing some kind of obscure mold from a crime scene, then looking up at me once you figured it all out, eyes lit up. _John, do you see?_ I close my eyes. _Deep breaths, Watson. In, out. He's not here._  

“Well, hello, John! It's been, what, a year?” I snap my eyes open, and Molly is standing right in front of me. Her eyes, soft around the edges from concern, seem to also have dark rings under them. Her hair is in her normal ponytail, if slightly messy. _Why would you be losing sleep, Molly?_

 _You see, but you don’t observe, John_. I hear your voice in my head, again. My breath hitches.

Molly steps forward, putting an arm on my shoulder. Just a comforting gesture, one friend to another, but I flinch. I feel like I might lose my composure if I stay in here much longer. I realize that I've been clenching my fists, and I try to relax them. 

Molly evaluates me with a long look. “I wanted to tell you, but I never got a chance… I’m so sorry about Harry. Especially right after… Sherlock. If there is anything I can do…” she says softly, as if afraid I might bolt like a frightened animal. 

I can’t think about Harry. I clutch to the remainder of my limbo. _Work. File._ I had forgotten it was in my hands.

“I have this for you,” handing her the file. “And I’m sorry it's been so long. I honestly didn’t realize… I thought I'd ask if you wanted to go and have a cuppa, or a coffee. I haven’t any patients right now, and I thought it might be nice… to… you know… visit.” He ran his hand through his hair, annoyed with his own halted speech.

Molly smiles, sadly. “Sure, John. Anything you want, it’s a slow day for me. I just have to be back for...um, in an hour. Let me go get my coat."

When she's gone, I walk around the lab, examining different workstations to keep my mind away from the silence. At the far end of the lab, there is an evidence box on the counter with case files in it. One or two have been removed and are resting on the counter. I wonder what case Lestrade _et al._ are investigating these days, so I turn the box and examine the label on its side.

It's labeled "Sherlock Holmes."

All of the air is suddenly vacuumed from my lungs. I don’t know what to make of this. Why would she be looking at these? After more than two years? I glance over my shoulder—she has yet to re-emerge from wherever her coat is kept. Curiosity gets the better of me.

I pick one up and open it. There you are, staring back at me. A photo someone had paper-clipped to the edge. You’re not annoyed, but a bit piqued; one eyebrow raised, hands clasped behind your back. Detached gaze. As if you're not sure why anyone would take your photo. You're wearing your coat and scarf as always. Your curly dark hair is slightly windswept, like you had just been running. I wonder where they had gotten the photograph. Maybe Donovan had taken it at a crime scene as a joke. 

The pages on the top are Molly’s report. The police report is behind it, with big red letters on top: CASE CLOSED: SUICIDE.

The medical report is straightforward. Simple. Skull fracture, severe brain hemorrhage, death almost instantly. Strange, no broken limbs. _Did it look like you had broken anything? All I remember is your angular body sprawled, on the cold stone_ … Stop. 

Frowning, I turn to the police report. The crime scene encompasses both the rooftop and the pavement where Sherlock fell. Anderson’s report covers the ground: blood splatter on the pavement, angle of the fall. Forensics indicate that he jumped and was not pushed. Several eyewitness accounts. My account is in there, along with the transcript of the “phone call suicide note” ( _how had they gotten that? Mycroft?)._

Open and shut. Not a homicide, despite my protests that it must have been Moriarty. Despite my insistence that he must have been under duress somehow. To them, he was a disgraced hero, a fraud, who had leapt from a roof rather than face his true downfall. Moriarty wasn’t real, after all. Not to them.

I'm about to close the file (feeling sick to my stomach and wishing I had just left it bloody well alone) when something catches my eye. It's Lestrade’s report about the rooftop. Curious, only his signature, no one else’s. From what I knew about the crime scene, there was nothing on the rooftop. No evidence of a struggle, no sign that there had been anyone else up there.

But the story that was told in the newspaper articles, apparently, had a glaring omission. According to Lestrade’s report (marked _CONFIDENTIAL_ ), only feet away from Sherlock there was a huge pool of blood. At least four or five pints, enough to bleed someone out with a low chance of survival. Blood, but no body. It couldn’t have been Sherlock’s; not his blood type. I check the records at the back of the file. DNA analysis turned up no results. 

I slump back on the stool. I feel dizzy. Why would Lestrade, Molly, and whoever else knew about it… have kept that from me? Why wasn't it in the papers? It placed someone else on the roof—possibly even a body—at the time of Sherlock’s death. It might have been a homicide. Another suicide. It might have been another of Moriarty’s victims, killed to make Sherlock bend to his will. It might have been Moriarty himself. _Did you kill him? But why would you have jumped, if you'd already won?_  

You are leaning against the counter, considering me. _Keep your eyes fixed on me, John._

I hear footsteps, which suddenly stop dead in their tracks. My hallucination of Sherlock evaporates. I look up, with what I can only imagine is a face of complete horror, betrayal, and anguish. Molly is looking at me, at the file in my hands. As she comes up, I feel something slipping out of the file. My hand closes around it. It’s a phone. I turn around, putting the file back in the evidence box, while pulling the phone out and concealing it in my sleeve. As I do, I sneak a glance, and I recognize it-- it's Sherlock's old phone. I turn back around to face Molly.

“Let me explain,” she says. 

“You bloody well better,” I manage to say, grabbing my jacket. “Let’s go. I think I am going to need something stronger than tea.”

* * *

  

“Hello, Molly.” 

She's just coming through the door, and she stumbles visibly. “God, _Sherlock._ I didn’t even recognize you. What are you _wearing?_ ”

I raise an eyebrow. I'm sitting on a lab bench, my feet up on the counter. I'm in tattered jeans, a hooded sweatshirt, and a leather jacket.  Hat and sunglasses on the table. Simple disguise. No one would expect Sherlock Holmes to wear this. Hiding in plain sight was always my forte.

Molly. Eyes: red and puffy. Crying within the last hour. Sleep deprivation. Keeps tugging absently at jumper: regret, and guilt. Slight tinge of scotch in the air.

“You don’t need to feel guilty, Molly. Remember what I told you all those months ago?”

_I told you that I always trusted you. I told you that I was not ok, that I was going to die._

_You asked me what I needed. I told you that I needed you, Molly. And I did. I needed you to help me die._

“I remember. I offered to help. And I meant it. I am not sorry for helping you, because I know it saved John, Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson.  I-I just… John is so…” Stuttering, obvious distress. Emotional, translating to physical. Pulse beating more rapidly. But what about John? I have not dared follow him in months. I haven’t been in London. Too many eyes. Too many layers of Moriarty’s web all over Europe to pursue. But even when I did see him, he didn’t seem... Mycroft would tell me if John were truly not all right. He would. For some odd reason, my own heartbeat accelerates. I ignore it.

“John is so what?”

“I just had a drink with him, you know. He’s—he’s like a shell of himself, Sherlock. It’s like, when you jumped, you carved out the center of him and now all that’s left is the vessel. And then Harry… it was just too much. He walks, he talks, he even works in the hospital. But when I talk to him, his eyes… it’s like the life behind them is gone. Can’t you just tell him? Have him keep the secret?  God, if he knew how close you were…”

“He'll be fine.” _How many times have I said that now?_

Molly looks at me sadly, but without antagonism. _She said, back then, “You look sad. When you think he can’t see you.”_

I turn and pace down the lab. _Don’t you see John? I did this for you. I am doing this for you. You're not out of danger. _Shake my head. Not the time for sentiment. He can’t know. John’s face is like an open book, and Moriarty’s men would know in a second that I'm alive if I revealed myself to him. They are still circling John, Lestrade. Circling like vultures. Waiting. They could still trigger Moriarty’s assassination plan if they wanted. If I only knew what they were waiting for… 

_Later._

I walk back down the lab to Molly.

"Do you have something for me?"

She sighs, and her body seems to curl into itself, goes concave. Defeat. Grief. She stumbles over to the other end of the room, throwing her coat carelessly on the counter. Picks up a few files.

“Here, this is what you were looking for, right?” She pushes the files towards me, crossing her arms once I take them. My name is across the front in bold letters.

“Is this everything?” After glancing through them, I throw them back in the box. Next to my scarf, the one that was bloodied from the fall. Shame. It was my favourite. 

“Yes. By the way, Sherlock—why now? After all this time? Why do you want these now?”  I cock my head to the side, studying her, but don’t answer her question. 

“Anything else I need to know?” I say instead, picking up the box.

Molly puts her hands over her face. Shoulders shake. Obvious need for physical comfort.

Put down box. Place hand on shoulder. Improvement? Marginal. “Molly?”

She looks up at me, tears running down her face, then starts babbling quickly as if she had been holding back: “He never comes down here, Sherlock. Not once in two years. I never expected him to walk in, I thought I’d left the box in my office, but I must have moved it out to the counter without realizing it. I have been so careful until now, I had it locked up… I’m so sorry…”

“Molly, what happened. Tell me. Now.” My tone is clipped. I’m losing my patience.

“He saw the files. He… he read the report that there was blood on the roof. Moriarty’s blood. Lestrade didn’t know whose it was, of course. He just wrote a report about the blood. And the lack of a body. I did what you said. I managed to convince Lestrade that telling John about it would not ease his grief. But now he knows. He knows that there was someone else up there, and he has a pretty good hunch who it was. And, Sherlock—he is going to start trying to find out. I tried. But I couldn’t convince him not to.”

* * *

 

I hardly ever drink, at least not to excess. I don’t like the feeling that I am going down Harry’s path. Getting out of control. But every once in a while (say, when you find out that your closest friends have been lying to you for two and a half years about the worst day of your life), a man needs a big drink. Or four.

I stay at the pub long after Molly has left. She had two glasses of scotch, and now I’m on my… fifth? It doesn’t matter. I finish it and order another.

Molly tried to explain why they had kept the blood a secret. Tried to stop me from wondering who was up there and why. Told me that Lestrade was only trying to spare me more pain.  It makes no sense. Sherlock is dead. The blood on the roof doesn’t make him more or less dead. But it could give me more answers, answers to why he… did what he did. 

I am wrapped up in my pain, grief, waves of it washing over me again and again. I haven’t let myself feel like this in so long. I've been able to stay in my limbo, cut off from emotion, and now it's almost overwhelming. More scotch. Feeling more numb now. 

I barely notice when someone bumps me from behind. I glance around. He is already moving away, cap, leather jacket. Didn’t even apologize. Tosser. I take another drink. The numbness is starting to overtake me. Good. 

* * *

 

I need to know what Moriarty’s men planted for John to find. And why. I can’t seem to find anything missing from the catalogue of the evidence box. I can’t see another way.

Pub next to the hospital. John is still there. Ordering another drink. Speech: definitely slurred. Reaction time: slowed. Drunk. Very drunk. This might not be as hard as I thought.

I have the syringe in my sleeve, it will just take a moment. I walk up casually, and bump him, just enough to inject him with the serum. Walk away. Slowly, as if I didn’t even notice. He barely registers it. Excellent. 

After a few more minutes, he is dozing while sitting up at the bar. The bartender is clearly considering whether to kick him out or call him a cab. It's still the middle of the afternoon, after all. 

I walk over, smiling apologetically. “Sorry ‘bout my mate, his girl just left ‘im,” I say in cockney. “I’ll take the sod ‘ome.”

The bartender looks relieved. “That redhead who was sitting here before, eh? Poor fellow. The drinks are on me then, mate. Redheads.” He shakes his head seriously. I realize he wants me to laugh, so I do. 

I pick John up and carry him out. Hail a cab, tell them his address. He is groggy, but not fully asleep. I hope that my new formula will keep him awake longer, though it will be slightly less effective in extracting exact truth. Memory loss should still be in effect. 

We arrive at his flat, and I help him upstairs. From all appearances, I am simply helping my drunk friend. I take off his shoes and help him in bed. I take off my wig and hat. It doesn’t matter if he sees me, he won’t remember it. I sit next to him on the bed, put my hand on his shoulder. 

“John, wake up. Just for a minute.”

“Sherlock?” he mumbles. He opens his eyes. There is a hollow aspect to them.  _Stay on task_.

“Hello, John.”

“Sherlock,” he breathes. “Stop appearing everywhere. I can’t take it anymore.” He blinks back tears. He thinks he is hallucinating me. Must act quickly.

“John. This is important. Was there anything in the evidence box? Anything that you found? Maybe in your office?” 

“Sherlock. The blood. The roof. Why did you jump? Why? I believed in you.” John is getting hysterical. I frown. Serum may need to be adjusted again. 

“John, I need you to concentrate. Keep your eyes open, keep them on me. Think about today. Did you find anything? Did someone give something to you? Anything, even if it seemed inconsequential at the time.”

“You…You called me. Then you fell. The blood, Sherlock. Whose blood?”  John is not making sense anymore.  He is reliving that day in his mind, probably triggered by reading the file. He is so focused on the blood, Moriarty’s blood. He must not be aware of the object, or it has not been planted on him yet. I start to get up.

John catches my arm. His eyes are shifting, unfocused. “Sherlock! No, don’t leave again. Please. I know you weren’t a fake. Please.” 

“You will be fine, John. Try to forget, move on. You are just causing yourself more pain. Stop thinking about the blood. Stop digging.” I know he won’t remember this, but perhaps it will remain embedded in his subconscious. Mental note: do more experiments with this at later date. 

“I can’t, Sherlock.” Tears running freely now, the lines of pain visible on his face. My chest feels tight. _Stay detached._ Offer a small amount of physical comfort. Similar to touching Molly’s arm.

I smooth back his hair, and lean down, just enough to brush my lips lightly on his forehead. “Sleep now. Goodbye, John.” He sighs and drifts off.

* * *

 

 _Concentrate. Keep your eyes fixed on me._ I am, I’m watching, nothing ever changes. I'm never any closer to understanding. _Keep your eyes fixed on me._ I wish I knew what you were trying to tell me. I feel your lips on my forehead. _Goodbye, John,_ the air sighs.

I wake up, gasping for air, alone in my flat. It’s morning. That was a strange version of the dream. It felt so real, like my hallucination of you was coming to life again. I have never imagined you kissing me goodbye before. Probably should reconsider those antipsychotics.

How did I get back to my flat? I remember being in the pub, then waking up here. I must have gotten a cab in my drunken haze. I sit up. Terrible idea. Head is spinning. I lay down again, slowly.

I rub my temples with my forefingers, and think back on the dream. You wanted me to only look at you. Was that because you wanted to see my eyes in your final moments? Was it something else? Were you trying to distract me from something? _Tell me, Sherlock, tell me what you were trying to get me to see._

_Don’t just look, John. Observe._

“I hate it when you’re so cryptic,” I say. Now I am talking to the hallucination, the fake voice in my head. Brilliant. I rub my hands over my face. The part of my brain that has immortalized you, made you into a bitterly broken record in my head, isn’t even making sense. That’s a bad sign. _Observe_. You always say that. I was looking at you. You were looking back at me, as if I were the last thing you could cling onto in the entire world. You said, “I invented Moriarty,” then you glanced backward.

_You glanced backward._

I sit up suddenly (big mistake). I clutch my head as it spins. Moriarty. He was on the roof with you, wasn’t he? Was that his blood?  _Very good, John. You are starting to see._ I imagine you smiling approvingly. But the realization only brings up dozens of new questions. How did it take me so long to realize that? What was he doing there? If he was already dead, or at least very severely injured (which he must have been considering the amount of blood), what happened to him? Did someone clear the body away? Who?

I glance over to my jacket, where the phone is in the hidden inner pocket.  I feel a twinge of guilt again, for taking it. It's evidence, after all. But I just wanted to have a part of you with me.  Surely the police have already extracted everything they can from it. I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet, because I was with Molly and then I was (apparently) blackout drunk.

I take it out, wondering if there is any battery left. I try to switch it on. Maybe someone charged it when they were cataloguing it. To my surprise, it works. No password. _Strange, very unlike you._ I immediately look at your texts. The last two. Between you. And him.

_Come and play.  St. Bart’s Hospital rooftop._

_P.S. Got something of yours you might want back. –SH_

_I’m waiting… -JM_

* * *

 

I can just imagine you piecing it together now, John. The lumbering cogs in your brain are clicking, laboriously working, slow and steady. It was always agonizing for me to watch, how slowly you would figure things out. You are starting to realize that it was Moriarty on the roof with me. That it was his blood.

Not even Lestrade knows that Moriarty was up there. Only Molly and Mycroft. I had already been pronounced dead, and I was lying in the morgue, covered in a sheet. Once everyone was gone, I sat up, and asked where his body was. “Whose body?” Molly stammered, still wired with adrenaline from pronouncing me dead to John and Lestrade. I frown. Hopefully she is a composed liar when she needs to be.

“Moriarty,” I said slowly, as if I were talking to someone daft. “He killed himself on the rooftop. Shot himself in the mouth while I was standing there.”

“Sherlock, no one was on the roof when Lestrade arrived on the scene. There was no body, just blood,” Mycroft said grimly.

I turned my head so quickly to look at him that I got whiplash. My brain started whirring, and I saw the same thoughts scampering across his eyes. We have a whole conversation by just looking at each other. I had been too busy faking my own demise to worry about Moriarty’s body on the roof, which (I thought) wasn’t going anywhere. Had one of Moriarty’s minions cleared it away? Mycroft shook his head slightly. 

“No,” I said.  “No.” I got up, holding the sheet around me as I paced. Moriarty. He would want me to take the fall, even after my demise, for yet another death: Richard Brook’s.  He would want my reputation to suffer even more. Sherlock Holmes, fake genius, kills the poor, struggling actor he coerced into playing the most infamous fake villain of all time, before killing himself.

So no. He wouldn’t have tried to cover up his death. But what if… no. It can’t be. Mycroft stepped on my sheet to stop me.

“Get off my sheet.”

He ignored me. “Sherlock, there is something else. The video surveillance I had put up on the roof has been compromised. It seems that someone diverted the feed. We don’t have a recording of what happened.” He turned to Molly. “You might want to bring out the cadaver now, Molly, so that they have something to bury. Make sure the face is mangled a bit. We will not have an open casket, but all the same…

Molly winced, but set out to do her work.

Mycroft started to walk briskly out of the room, but hesitated at the door. “And one more thing, Sherlock. Your phone, the one you threw down just before you jumped—it’s gone. And the police do not have it.” He tapped his umbrella against the doorframe, and left. 

* * *

 

I shudder, reading the text from Moriarty. You were meeting him, Sherlock. Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you stop me from going to see Mrs. Hudson? You sent your text long before I left you. Or… was it you who was trying to get me out of the way? Did you orchestrate the fake distress call to make sure I wasn’t there? _Alone protects me,_ you said then.

Lestrade, the investigators, they must have seen these texts. They probably attributed it to your continued delusions, talking to the fake Moriarty before you died. But you admitted that you were a fake, so why would you text a fake person right before you killed yourself? What would you gain from that?

_Exactly. What else?_

I try to reason it out.  I start pacing like you used to, back and forth. Moriarty must have died up there, he couldn’t have lost that much blood and survived. No one knew that he was dead, except, I assume, his criminal network. So bloody hopeless. I’m always one step behind you. Trying to figure out the remnants of clues you left me. 

I wonder if there is anything else that the phone can tell me, so I look back at other texts. Mostly you texted Lestrade, Mycroft (those are mysteriously wiped) and… me. I’ll just look at your last ones to me to see if there is anything important…

As I click on my name, there is a text in the composition box which you had never sent. It says only: “Alas, poor Yorrick! I knew him.”

In your last moments, you tried to text this to me? What is it? And why? You couldn’t say it to me during the phone call. But you also didn’t press send. Did you think that Lestrade would tell me after he found the phone?  

I do a quick search on my laptop. The quote is from Shakespeare, from _Hamlet._

I pause. I consider. _I have something you might want back_. You must have been talking about the key code, the one that would crack any system in the world. Had you found it? Is that what you are trying to lead me to? Where it is hidden? So I could use it to bring back the records of Moriarty’s identity, and clear your name? You would have to leave a trail that only I could find.

Then there is the quote itself.  I do a bit of research about it. It is about a dead friend. A scene where Hamlet is talking to a skull. _Talking to a skull._ “Friend of mine. Well I say _friend_ ,” you said the day we met, shrugging. Motioning to your skull.

I’m still in my clothes from yesterday, so I grab my jacket, run out to the street, and grab a taxi.                                                                                                   

* * *

_He knows.  –SH_

_? –MH_

_Don’t play with me. John knows about the blood. –SH_

_Indeed. –MH_

_I still don’t know what Moriarty’s men have planted on him, even after drugging John with my serum.  –SH_

_And doing that yourself was completely necessary? You know I have men who could have done it. Is it possible that you miss him? -MH_

_Piss off. –SH_

_My pleasure as always, brother. –MH_

* * *

I look up at 221B Baker Street. The façade is so familiar to me that I could draw it with my eyes closed. If I could draw, that is. But I have avoided it for the past two years. I didn’t want to see your ghost sweeping over the threshold. I see it often enough. 

I take out my keys and open the door. Gauging from the silence, Mrs. Hudson must be out. I start up the stairs, flashing back to that black winter night, not long after The Fall. It was only a couple of years ago, but I feel like have aged dozens since then. Mycroft said he had “arranged” for the flat to remain vacant. I wonder how much that costs the British Government. And what the point was, since I will never move back here. 

I reach the top of the stairs. The living room is packed neatly in boxes, and the furniture covered in sheets. That’s better than last time. Harder to remember what you actually looked like sitting there in your chair, engrossed in something on my laptop, letting your tea get cold…

I shake my head clear of the memory. I shift my gaze over to the mantelpiece, and sure enough, there is the skull. I wonder why Mrs. Hudson didn’t move it. I stride over, and pick it up gingerly. Nothing underneath it. I’m not sure what I expected. Were you telling me to talk to the skull when you were gone? Like you did? That doesn’t make sense. _I talk to you, my memory of you, instead._

I turn it over in my hands, trying to figure out what is different about it. Then I look on the inside.

Right there, in cramped writing, above the eyesockets, is written: “John. Mycroft. 20:9”

Mycroft and I, the only two people who would have understood what that text meant, who would have looked for this. Why were there periods after each of our names, though? Then in a flash, I knew. _Is this what it was like to be in your brain? Bursts of inspiration just come to you?_ John. Mycroft. J.M. for short. Jim Moriarty. Sherlock was trying to tell me something else about Moriarty. But this had to have been written long before the roof. Was it some kind of contingency, an emergency message to send when things were most dire?

I turn my attention to the numbers. It almost looks like the smugglers’ code we had used back in the Blind Banker case. But it’s not written in the ancient symbols. And how would I know what book to use to find the word? But… the fact that the number at the end is phrased in that way… it looks like a bible verse. There was a bible here somewhere Sherlock used to prop up his microscope… I search in the boxes, and finally find it under a moth eaten throw rug.

I realize that I can’t go further. Which book of the Bible would it be in? I stare back at the note. 20:9 is not enough to go on. Then it dawns on me. Of course. It’s almost too elegant. _Very good, John, two deductions in as many minutes._ It would have to be in the book of John.

I flip to John 20:9— it’s the story of the resurrection of Christ-- and the verse reads: “For they did not yet understand the scripture that he had to rise from the dead.”

 _Rather grandiose, don’t you think Sherlock?_ My fictitious version of you raises your eyebrow at me, saying nothing. _Oh, come on, I knew that you had a God complex, but this is taking it a little far. But what does it have to do with Moriarty? This verse is about resurrection from the dead. Is Moriarty being resurrected?_

You say nothing. The voice is quiet. And I’m stumped. My head is still spinning from all the scotch, and I feel like my hangover is actually getting worse. I don’t have a violin to play in frustration, like Sherlock did, so instead I head over to the couch and fall onto it, sheet and all. Dust flies up everywhere but I barely notice.  

 _The only thing I can think of is that you were trying to tell me how to beat Moriarty, when you couldn’t._ To give me clues, leading me to something.  The code to break his false identity, or something else that would clear Sherlock’s name.

I am about to drift into sleep, thinking about a Sunday morning long ago, here at Baker Street. I was half asleep in my bed, hearing the violin playing sweetly from downstairs. Bach, I think. The air is so laden with it that it almost looked like the sunlight is swirling into melody.

The scene shifts. Am I already dreaming? This is a different memory. Of the time when I was in the flat, a few weeks after Sherlock… fell. I distinctly remember being in the living room. Looking at the violin, touching the case. I realize, as I tip over into my dreams, that it wasn’t there tonight. _Your violin is gone._  

 _Keep your eyes fixed on me, John._

* * *

 

 _You are standing at the pool, your back is turned. I see you before you can see me. I emerge, so that I am standing in the undulating light, Moriarty in my ear. My chest feels heavy. Well of course it does. There is a semtex vest with a bomb strapped to it._

_You look at me. You can’t see the vest under my coat. For a moment, just a moment, you think that it was me. That I was Moriarty all along. And I see it in your eyes. The most anguish I have ever seen, like your world was being ripped to pieces. And it’s only the beginning._

_I will burn the heart out of you, Moriarty says._

_His laughter echoes through the empty pool house…_

I open my eyes. It’s mid-afternoon. At least this time it was a different nightmare. I was the one in immediate danger, not you. I didn’t wake up screaming, but my lungs feel compressed. I need to get out of the flat. The air is suffocating. I can’t think about the look in your eyes.

I am not sure what is next, because the clue seems like a dead end. I take a picture of the inside of the skull with my phone, look around the flat once more for the violin (it is definitely gone... must ask Mycroft if he took it), grab my jacket and head down the stairs.

I step outside. The spring air is crisp, but I don’t need more than a jumper. I take off my jacket. When did it become spring? Time has no meaning anymore.

I hear it before I see it. One of the sleek black cars. Mycroft.

“No,” I say over my shoulder, when I hear the window rolling down. I don’t even look at him. 

“Mycroft wants you to see something, Doctor.” A voice I don’t recognize.

“Tosser.” I say under my breath, and just keep walking, shoving my hands into my pockets.

“Don’t you want to know about the blood on the roof? And what happened to the body?”

I stop dead in my tracks, and the car loiters next to me. I turn slowly, and a man is looking at me from the window.  He is a bit older than me, with black hair, meticulously combed. Sharp pinstriped suit and purple tie. Piercing green eyes. He looks at me smugly, because knows he has me on the hook.

“Who are you?”

“Unnecessary detail. I am, shall we say, a lieutenant. Get in, please, Doctor,” he says, and I oblige, albeit grumbling under my breath.

Once we start moving, I ask, “How did Mycroft know about that? I thought only Molly did.” I try to hide my curiosity. It’s not hard, because my hatred for Mycroft—and anyone associated with him—is so strong. My fists are balled on my thighs. 

“Only Molly, Lestrade and our team knew about the blood. We wouldn’t have even let Lestrade know, but he was the first on the scene.” He twirls an umbrella. Is an umbrella some kind of requirement if you work for Mycroft? 

I shake my head. “Why? Why would you hide the fact that Moriarty died on the roof just before Sherlock jumped? Couldn’t we have used it in some way to clear his name? 

The man smiles broadly, as if he is pleased with me. But his smile makes me squirm. It seems off, somehow. Like the Cheshire cat. I half expect him to disappear but leave the smile behind. He ignores my second question, and addresses the first. “Ah, Doctor. So you have deduced that it was Moriarty. How did you realize it?” 

“It was Sherlock. I realized that I knew it all along, but it was just hidden under the layers of everything else that happened that day. He told me that he had invented Moriarty, and then he glanced backwards over his shoulder, at something on the ground behind him. At the time, I was just thinking about how to get Sherlock down, I didn’t think about anything else. But yesterday I realized that it had to be Moriarty, and that proves Moriarty must have said something or done something that made Sherlock jump.”  I don’t say anything about the texts on Sherlock’s phone, which had only confirmed what I already knew.

“Excellent, John.” _That reminds me so much of something you would say that I could scream._ I clench my fists tighter.

“But there is one thing that Lestrade didn’t know. And that Molly is only cursorily aware of.”  I look at him sideways, with one eyebrow raised, the way you used to when you were trying to get more information.

He chuckles slightly. “Just watch.” He nods toward a little screen in front of us, which I hadn’t noticed until now. _Seeing but not observing. Yet again._

It blinks once, and then there is a black and white shot of the roof at St. Bart’s. The camera must have been perched on the door or an exhaust pipe, hidden. I shudder. There you are, at the bottom of the screen, and there is Moriarty, sitting on the ledge, waiting. You walk towards him, slowly. You are talking, but I can’t hear what you are saying. It’s like an old-time black and white film, a pantomime. I half expect to see lines of dialogue interspersed with the action.

Eventually, Moriarty gets up, walking around you as he talks. He circles you, taunting you, like predator and prey, and you stand still, but composed, hands clasped behind you. You are probably having some genius-level battle of wits that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with.  Suddenly, he must have said something that enraged you, because you grab him by the collar, threatening to push him over the edge. Unperturbed, he calmly says something. _What is it? What is he saying?_ He repeats a word twice, dramatically. Finally, you stop. You pull him back from the edge. You look like you are defeated. Your back is to the camera, but I can see it in your shoulders. He says something else, nodding, and finally you walk over, and you look down from the ledge. _What did he say, Sherlock? What made you change your mind?_

“There is no sound recorded?” I ask the man. He just shakes his head. I turn back to the screen.

Moriarty waits as you step up. You say something over your shoulder, and he retreats a little. Is this when you call me? _Are those tears starting to prick my eyes? No. I can’t let… whoever this is… see that._ You stare downward for a moment. But then, you laugh. You turn around, hop off the ledge, almost gleeful. You even smile. You saunter over to Moriarty, as if you’d won, circling him this time. You look like you have figured out Moriarty’s game, and you are victorious over him after all. You stop, face to face with him. He says something, but I can’t see his expression; his back is to the camera. And then he lifts his hand, to shake yours. The victory is still in your eyes, I see it. You are about to win, to come back to me and Mrs. Hudson and Baker Street, just as it was.  But then, in almost tragic slow motion, Moriarty lifts the other hand, pulls his head back, and shoots himself in the mouth.

“Bugger!” I scream. The “lieutenant” remains serene.  Obviously, he has seen this before. “What the—”

“Just watch,” he says smoothly.

You recoil automatically, practically falling backwards. Moriarty’s body is on the ground in a fraction of a second, splayed out, blood already starting to spread out from his head.

You are reeling. I have never seen you look so... so completely unraveled. You stutter step a little, pace around. Regain your balance, and your mental faculties, then pause for a moment, turning towards the front of the building. You appear to make a decision. You step back onto the ledge.  You pick up your phone, dial a number, and look down. You start talking. To me. 

I close my eyes and turn my head. Bloody hell.

_I can’t. I can’t Sherlock. I can’t watch this, I can’t watch you talk to me before you die again. I see it in my dreams often enough._

Mycroft’s lieutenant must notice that I need to stop watching, and gives me space. After a few minutes, though, he says, “You might want to watch now, John.” I don’t want to, but I open my eyes and look at the screen again. You aren’t on the ledge anymore. You have already jumped. I let go of a breath I didn’t realize I had been holding.

Nothing is happening. The roof is like a still life. Your phone lying near the ledge, and Moriarty’s body is in a pool of blood. His eyes still staring glassily into space. After a few minutes I get a little peeved, starting to wonder why Mycroft is showing me this. Then it happens.

Moriarty. _He just blinked. Did he? Yes, he did_. He yawns _._ Then, he stretches slowly, as if he just had a long nap, and sits up. The back of his head is to us. There is no exit wound. No bits of exploded skull and brain, like there should be. I have seen a head shot like that. With a gunshot at that close range, most of the back of his head should be a mess. I must be gaping at the screen, like an idiot. I can’t make sense of this. He stands up abruptly, as if nothing is amiss, and walks briskly over to the ledge, adjusting his cufflinks as he goes. He peers over. Seems satisfied with what he sees.  _How did I not look up, and see him at that moment? Oh right. Your bloody corpse was probably more at the forefront of my mind._ Looking to his feet, Moriarty picks up the phone you had thrown down. Your phone. The phone I currently have burning a hole in my pocket. 

He turns on his heel, that simpering smile on his face, and wanders back over to the door. Just before he leaves, though, he looks right up to the camera. He winks, tosses the phone once in the air, catches it, and disappears.

Moriarty is alive. He knew that the camera was there, recording his apparent resurrection. And he had your phone.

I can’t decide what to do with this information. I obviously have the phone that Moriarty had picked up from the rooftop, after Sherlock jumped. It never made it into the investigation, it was never examined for evidence by Lestrade. How, then, had it been in that box?

“Well?” the lieutenant is studying me intently, but I have purposefully been keeping my face as calm as possible, so as not to give anything away. I still don’t trust him, and I am not about to tell him about the phone. Let him think that my elevated pulse rate is just from having to relive the death of my best friend. Again.

“So, Moriarty isn’t dead,” I begin with the obvious. 

“Correct,” he says, almost sounding bored, like a schoolteacher awarding points. He and Mycroft are perfect for each other. I clench my fist, trying to resist punching him in those perfect teeth. 

“He… faked his death, somehow, to make Sherlock commit suicide. At least that’s what it looked like. Sherlock seemed to have gotten the best of him, until Moriarty pulled the trigger. That’s when Sherlock realized that he had to… do what he did.” 

“Excellent deductions from simple body language and action, Doctor. He would be proud.” 

That would have made me wince if it weren’t so patronizing. 

I sit there, trying to figure out the whole thing. Moriarty, dead, but not dead. “Has he still been orchestrating his network?”

“As far as we can tell from surveillance, no. The rest of his web of criminals all believe him to be dead. His second in command has stepped into his place. Why he would do this, we can only guess. Possibly so that he can hunt any remaining enemies from obscurity.” 

I consider this for a moment. It doesn’t fit right, but I can’t really put my finger on why.

“The strangest part is… He doesn’t care that _you_ know he is alive, and that he had Sherlock’s phone. In fact, he must have _wanted_ you to know. He’s too clever—he knew the camera was there, he even looked straight at it. But… why would he want you to know he is alive, if the rest of his minions think he’s dead? Was it just to rub the fact that he had finally defeated Sherlock in your face? He seems too elegant for that.” 

He smiles again. “And that, dear Doctor, is the real question.” 

* * *

 

A dark-haired woman (wig) leaves a side door, and starts walking briskly down the narrow alley. Her cheap bright blue heels clicking on the asphalt. Coat: well made, but worn, definitely secondhand. Heels: chipped and slightly dirty. Disguise all bought at a consignment store. Poorly maintained. I follow, wandering casually, hood up over my cap. She just left one of Moriarty’s former safehouses, intelligence I gained from my new friend in Bristol. _Well, I say ‘friend.’_  

She stops at a junction, hesitates. Turns right. I walk slowly, waiting for her to reach the end of the alley, and peek around the corner.

She is standing there, staring straight at me. Waiting for me. I duck back so that she cannot see my face.

“I have been waiting for you,” she says, her voice smooth, silky. Just a hint of cockney that she is trying to hide. “You don’t need to kidnap and interrogate me. I will tell you what you need to know.”

How…? Does he know it’s me? No, he can’t. I have wiped the memories of everyone I have come across when I am not wearing a disguise. My mind is whirring at a million kilometers an hour. I peek around the corner. She is smiling, but the smile does not reach her eyes, which are like pools of darkness. 

“I am supposed to tell you.” A long pause. “ _All the world plays the actor_.” Then, in a fraction of a second, she takes a pill out of her clutch, places it in her mouth, and bites down. Cyanide.

I’m running down the corridor. When I reach her, she is collapsed on the ground, already frothing at the mouth. I still shake her, trying to get any more information that I can. “Why does Moran want me to know this? Does he know who I am?” 

The silence is deafening.

* * *

 

_I showed John the video. Mycroft’s men were nearby. –SM_

_Good, they will start diverting their resources to finding you instead of following him. We need to keep to the timeline. Has he been to the library? -JM_

_He didn’t even mention it, or the phone.  But he was near Baker Street, so he must be close. –SM_

_He had no idea that you weren’t one of Mycroft’s? -JM_

_Never suspected.  –SM_

_Well done. Cheers. -JM_

* * *

 

I am sitting on a park bench, cradling the phone in my hands like a grenade. For all I know, it could be one. Moriarty had this phone all along. The police never had it. So the only way that I could possibly have it now was if he had wanted me to. He had one of his minions place it in the evidence box for me to find. I know now why it had been so easy: unlocked, no password. He is obviously trying to play me like a puppet on a string, taunting me with Sherlock’s memory. If he really is alive, he could have killed me dozens of times by now. But what was the purpose? He can’t hurt Sherlock through me anymore, and I should be inconsequential to him. Just an ant on the side of the road. Not worth noticing. Maybe he’s just bored. Maybe he wants me to find whatever Sherlock was leading me to.  

Another black car pulls up. What is this, a bloody police state? ‘Big Brother is Watching You,’ indeed. Sherlock’s big brother, to be exact. I stow the phone in my jacket pocket, quickly, and stare at the ground.

“John.”

“I’m not in the mood to be abducted for a second time today, Mycroft. What, your lieutenant forget something?” 

“I’m sorry? Who?”

I look up, ready to make a sardonic response, and I see his completely impassive but incredulous face.

“Your lieutenant, the one who showed me the video, not an hour ago.”

Mycroft set his lips in a fine line. “I sent no such person, and I know nothing of a video. Your detail did, however, see you get into an unidentified vehicle, which is why I am here. Get in, Doctor, we obviously have much to discuss.”

I gape at him. I have a detail? Scratch that, more importantly, if that wasn’t Mycroft’s lieutenant, then it must have been… one of _his._ Moriarty’s.

“Please, Doctor. We don’t know if this location is secure.”  I bite back a retort, and get in the car.

“What exactly did they show you?” Mycroft asks, once we start driving.

I am shaking my head in anger. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe that I had no idea they weren’t your men. Sherlock would have known in half a second. And why do you have men following me? How long has that been going on? 

“We have been aware for some time that your safety may be compromised. What did they tell you?”

I take a deep breath. “He… showed me a video of the roof of St. Bart’s. The day that Sherlock died. He showed them talking-- there was no sound-- but then Moriarty shot himself. Sherlock jumped not long after. And then… Moriarty got up, and walked away, unscathed. My only guess is that he used a blank bullet and squibs, but it must have been quite a lot of fake blood.”

Mycroft looks at me passively, taciturn as always, waiting for me to continue.

I realize something. “You knew, too. You knew about the blood, and you knew that Moriarty was alive.”

“Yes, I knew about the blood, but we did not know for sure whether Moriarty was alive. The camera was set up by MI5, but the video feed was interrupted and diverted elsewhere. So we never knew what happened to Moriarty. Was there anything else, Doctor? Did he do anything before he left?” 

He is wondering about the phone. I don’t want to tell him about that, not yet. “No, he just looked right at the camera, like he knew it was there. Then he winked.” 

Mycroft’s mouth sets in an even grimmer line. “What about this ‘lieutenant,’ what did he look like?”

I shudder, now realizing that I should have listened to my instincts. My gut had told me all along that the man in the car had been off, somehow. “He had dark hair, sharp suit like Moriarty used to wear--er, wears-- and bright green eyes. He looked almost catlike when he smiled.” 

Mycroft frowns. “Moran.” He starts typing away furiously on his Blackberry, no doubt alerting his minions.

“I’m sorry, who?”

“Moriarty’s second-in-command. I had a feeling that he was monitoring you, but I had no idea that he would go this far. Or why. We are going to have to be careful, Doctor. I have no idea what Moran has in store for you, but it cannot be good.” 

We sit in silence for a bit. The car is still driving, and I have no idea where we are.

I remember that I wanted to ask Mycroft something. Might as well do it when the tosser is sitting right in front of me.

“Mycroft. After Sherlock… passed… did you take his violin from Baker Street?” 

“Well, no, I didn’t,” Mycroft says, looking at me curiously. “Why would I want something that I couldn’t play?”

“I just… I didn’t see it there. He always had his violin in the living room, but today it was gone.” I feel embarrassed for some unknown reason. 

He eyes me, but doesn’t ask why I was at Baker Street.  “No, the only thing I removed from the flat was Sherlock’s classical music collection. It really is quite extraordinary. He started to put it all in a database once, because who really uses CDs anymore? But he never got around to finishing it. He always used to order them so meticulously, back before he did cases, mostly,” Mycroft mused, looking out the window, playing with the handle of his umbrella, as if we weren’t just discussing the resurrection of his brother’s murderer moments earlier. I can only assume that the collection was created during Sherlock’s drug phase. His mania would have been hard to handle, especially a drugged mania, and he would have had to divert his energy somehow.  

“The number and ordering system was all on his computer, so I had someone finish it. He had lists of his favorites. CD number, track number, sometimes even listed pinpointed seconds within a track that he wanted to replicate on the violin. His citation system was slightly strange, though; it was a CD number, then a colon, then the track number. He used to write them all over his walls. One of the reasons he was forced to leave other flats.” Mycroft smirks.

I stare at Mycroft. The note in the skull flashes into my mind. 20:9. It wasn’t a verse citation from the Bible. It was music. CD 20, track 9. _Of course. You would have expected me to tell Mycroft about it, since both of us were mentioned. “John. Mycroft. 20:9.” I was missing part of the clue._  

I exhale loudly, and Mycroft turns to me, eyebrow raised. “Where is the database?”

“I donated it to the British Library." He looks at me, again, considering. "You know, Doctor, it might be best if I took you to a safehouse. Just as a precaution, you understand."

"No way," I say automatically. I still don't trust him enough. _And besides, what kind of danger could I really be in?_

Mycroft sighs, shaking his head. "You are almost as stubborn as he was." I clench my jaw again.

"In that case, I have an important matter I must attend to. Should I take you back to your flat, then, Doctor? Or perhaps the hospital?” 

“No, Mycroft,” I answer softly, my hand curling around the phone in my pocket. “Just drop me off here.” 

After the car has turned the corner, I hail a cab, and tell them to take me to the Library.

* * *

  

My phone pings. Mycroft.

 _Moran just showed John the video of the roof, in person. John is getting into deeper danger by the minute. He refused my offer to be transferred to a safehouse. I have sent men after Moran.  -MH_

_I know he is in London, I am on his trail. Double the detail on John. –SH_

_I will do everything I can, but you know that it may not be enough. –MH_

I don’t respond for several minutes. My phone pings again.

_By the way, did you have any idea that the good Doctor would realize your violin is missing from Baker Street? He thought I had taken it. I don’t think he suspects anything. –MH_

I smile a little. _The one time you are actually observant. Damn you, John Watson._

* * *

 

I make it to the British Library with only half an hour to spare before closing. I run up the grand staircase two steps at a time, feeling like I am on a case again. Except that this is a trail left by… you.

I head straight to the digital records desk, and inquire about an extensive classical music collection that had been donated in the last two years. The woman clearly knows what I am talking about, shows me to a computer, and opens a database for me. She hands me some headphones.  “Let me know if there is anything you require,” she says, walking away briskly, typing something on her phone. 

I look through the contents. Sure enough, there are hundreds of albums, in no discernable order to an ordinary mind. I’m sure that Sherlock ordered them according to tonal scale or by some obscure rating system. Hopefully they had kept it in the same order.

I click on album number 20, track 9. I plug in the headphones and put them on. 

It’s not music. It is a voice. A voice that I recognize: Harry. She is crying. It sounds like the middle of a conversation. 

“I just don’t know what to do.  I want to tell John, but he can’t… I can’t… I had no one else to call.” 

“Harry, I cannot help you. And neither can he,” a terse voice responds. I gasp. It’s Sherlock’s voice.

“But, can’t you just...? Please. I can’t ask John. They are coming for me.” She sounds drunk. 

“Harry, don’t involve John in this. I have already given you more than enough. You know what to do, where you need to go.”

She hiccups. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I just… tell him... if...”

“I will. Goodbye, Harry.” Dial tone.

A robotic voice comes on: “End of recording. Date: January 12, 2012. Eye Vee, dot seven, dot one six three, dash one eight zero.”

My jaw is clenched. A conversation between the two people in the world who meant the most to me, and who are both dead.  Like ghosts talking. I listen to the recording again. Then a third time, writing down a transcript of the call on a pad of paper. I am still reeling with disbelief. Sherlock must have had recordings of his conversations automatically uploaded from his phone into his computer.  It seems that they were accidentally intermingled with his music collection and transferred to this database after he died. More importantly, Sherlock knew something about Harry, only days before he fell. Only weeks before she died. 

Harry had sounded unbelievably upset. She sounded like… she knew she was going to die. _And she asked you for help, Sherlock._ Did she owe someone money? Was someone threatening her? Was her death not an accident? Everything I find just brings up more questions. I feel exhausted. 

My phone buzzes. Bugger. A text message from Clara. I sigh. I forgot that I had promised to have her for tea tomorrow, since we hadn’t seen each other in ages. I scribble down the robotic message on the front of the folder, looking at the strange numeric sequence at the end (iv.7.163-180). Is it a serial number for the recording? A code? A book in the Dewey Decimal System? And what the bloody hell does it have to do with Moriarty? 

The librarian is ushering me out. I sigh and grab my coat. Another strange clue, another dead end.

* * *

 

 _My contact at the library tells me that John just accessed the music database. Book will arrive tomorrow afternoon. -SM_  

_Excellent. The chess pieces are in place. Are you ready for the grand finale? -JM_

_Of course. -SM_  

_Job well done, Sebastian. -JM_

_Oh, captain, my captain! -SM_

* * *

 

“Have you decided to take up literature study and abandon the medical field?” Clara says jokingly the next day, as I came over to the table with cups and a teapot. She is holding the folder in her hands. I had left it in the entryway by accident. 

“What are you on about?” 

She points at the writing on the front. “IV.7.163-180. It looks like… a citation from a play. Harry read English Literature at uni, remember? I picked up some things from her here and there,” she says, shrugging, then pouring us each a cup of tea. “Act 4, Scene 7, lines 163-180.”

I look down at the folder, then up at her, and suddenly I grab her and kiss her on the cheek. She looks mildly surprised.

“Clara, you’re brilliant! A play. I never would have gotten that one.” 

But which play? What play was that other quote from... 

 _Hamlet_. Once I see all the clues, all the pieces set out, it all seems to fit so tightly, like a beautifully composed symphony. But when had Sherlock gotten so poetic? It seemed unlike him. Sherlock was chaos, not order. This was too... perfect. _Your deduction ability is greatly improving, John._

Shaking my head, I grab my laptop and search for Act 4, Scene 7, lines 163-180 in Hamlet, and find the passage:

 

**GERTRUDE**

There is a willow grows aslant a brook  
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.  
There with fantastic garlands did she come  
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,  
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,  
But our cold maids do “dead men’s fingers” call them.  
There, on the pendant boughs her coronet weeds  
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke,  
When down her weedy trophies and herself  
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide,  
And mermaid-like a while they bore her up,  
Which time she chanted snatches of old lauds  
As one incapable of her own distress,  
Or like a creature native and indued  
Unto that element. But long it could not be  
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,  
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay  
To muddy death.

 

Clara is looking at the screen over my shoulder. 

“That was one of Harry’s favorites. It’s Gertrude’s speech about Ophelia killing herself-- drowning herself. In the river,” she says, biting her lip. She busies herself with pouring the milk, probably to stop thinking about Harry. Despite all their problems, Clara still loved her. Until the end. 

Dear god. Harry. Is Harry supposed to be Ophelia? Is Sherlock telling me that she killed herself? What does that have to do with Moriarty? I am trying to hide my emotions from Clara, though she is starting to look at me strangely. 

 I realize that I have to ask. “Why did Ophelia kill herself?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. Harry was the expert, not me.” 

* * *

 

I walk Clara to the door.  The rain is starting to come down in sheets.  As she is leaving, a man emerges from an unmarked van and walks toward me, holding a package. I sign for it, curious, because I haven’t ordered anything. It looks like a book. 

I open the packaging as I am walking back into the flat. It’s a volume of the Complete Works of Shakespeare, including _Hamlet_.  I open the cover. Inside, there is a name: Harry Watson. This is Harry’s old copy of Shakespeare. 

“Okay, now this is getting absurd,” I say aloud. Then I pause, and sit down at my table, holding the book in my hands. Sherlock couldn’t have sent this to me. Unless he had paid someone to delay delivering it, but why wait more than two years? It must be someone else. But who else would go through all this trouble? Who else would want me to know why Harry died? _You already know the answer, John. It’s staring you in the face._ My vision of you is observing me, waiting for me to catch up. _You know how I always found that face-- that “we both know what is really going on here” face-- unbelievably annoying._ Your eyebrow arches even higher.

I open the volume and flip to the passage that Clara and I had just read.  On the margin, next to Gertrude’s eulogy, there is an address. And four words, written in Harry’s slanted script: _For help: Sebastian Moran._

My throat makes a strangled noise when I gulp. _Harry was going to get help from Moran?_ My thoughts flash back to the conversation between Harry and Sherlock. Harry was in trouble, financial trouble. She was drinking again. Sherlock wouldn’t help her. He told her that she knew where to go, and to leave me out of it. Not long after, she was dead. No one had heard from her for weeks before her death. She lived alone, and wasn’t employed. I was not in regular contact with her, and neither was Clara. For all we knew, she had been missing since before Sherlock died. She could have been Moran’s captive. 

I breathe in sharply. All of this has been leading to Harry, not to Moriarty. And not to a way to vindicate Sherlock. The phone was planted by one of Moriarty’s men for me to find. The unsent text message was probably faked by him long after Sherlock was dead. Sherlock didn’t want me to hear the recording, Moriarty did. 

Harry went to Moran because she was desperate. And they want me to know. _Now you see, John. Took you long enough._ You are lying on my couch, hands steepled beneath your chin.

I feel sick. I put the book down and hold my head in my hands. I can see it all now, it’s so clear. I should have known after Moran showed me the video, but I didn’t want to believe it. Moriarty wanted me to know he was alive, that he had the phone. He was taunting me. Sherlock wouldn’t send me on this goose chase around London. The quotes from Shakespeare, writing in the skull, the delivery of the book at that exact moment-- it had all been too maudlin to be Sherlock, too embellished. It was all Moriarty. Like the fairy tales before the Fall, it was all his style. He left me a trail of cryptic breadcrumbs to follow, making me hope... and like the world’s biggest tosser, I fell for it all. I feel hatred, disgust, humiliation, and sorrow all twisting together and eating at my very core. _I have been tricked by Moriarty. But... why? And why now, after all this time?_  

But the most painful part is that it wasn’t Sherlock. I didn’t realize it until now, but the clues had felt like a last lifeline tying me to him. To the ghost of him. And it was all an illusion. A trick. My hallucination of Sherlock dissipates. _I really am all alone._

I walk over the window, looking out onto the street. I never look out this window. I am hardly ever in this flat, after all.  There are people passing by with umbrellas, doing their shopping, meeting at cafes, laughing. I envy them. I envy the people who were never caught in the crossfire in this kind of battle. A battle between two geniuses, where innocent people suffer. And die. 

I cross my arms. I know what I need to do, even though it’s what he wants. I might be walking straight into a trap. But I am going to the address in the book.

* * *

 

I stare up at the building, the rain pouring down on me. This is the only time I have ever wished Mycroft and his bloody umbrella were around. 

Anchor Terrace. Harry came here, in desperate times. She had no one to turn to. She had asked Sherlock for help. But instead she came here. Why? 

I take a deep breath, and ring the bell for number five.

“Password?” A gruff voice answers. 

I pause for a moment. _Think, Watson._ It has to be... “Ophelia.” 

There is no answer, only the buzzer sounding. I walk into the building and go to number five.  The door is ajar. I walk in. 

Moran is sitting in a large wingchair, sipping tea, facing away from me. There is a large fireplace, persian rugs, and another wingchair next to him. There is nothing else in the room, no other people or furnishings. But I am certain that his vanguard is not far.

“Do come in, Doctor. You are right on schedule. Please, sit. Would you like some tea?” 

I stay where I am. “What did you do to Harry?” I say with no preamble.

“I’m sorry, who?" 

I grit my teeth. “You know who I am talking about. My sister.” 

Without shifting his gaze from the fire, Moran puts his tea down. “Do you know the full story of Hamlet and Ophelia, Doctor?” 

“I don’t have time for more riddles, Moran.”

Slowly, ever so slowly, he turns and looks toward me. I shiver under his piercing green gaze. “Ah, you know who I am. You really are much more clever than he gave you credit for.” 

I resist the urge to ask who “he” refers to. “Why don’t you just stop the parlor tricks and tell me what the bloody hell is going on?”

Moran turns back toward the fireplace, smugly, and ignores my question. “Hamlet is one of the greatest tragedies of all time, but not because everyone dies at the end. Not many people realize that. The true tragedy lies in the grief, the agony, the death of the heart. The realization of what is truly important, but too late.” He picks up the cup and takes another sip, looking into the flames. “Hamlet had a great enemy, his uncle. Ophelia loved Hamlet, but he could not love her, because he was consumed by his lust for justice, his desire to defeat his enemy. In this pursuit, Hamlet killed someone very close to Ophelia. And he was exiled. Ophelia went mad with grief over her loss and his betrayal, and drowned herself. When Hamlet returned, he fell apart over her grave, realizing that he loved her all along. He later killed his enemy, but died in the process. Alone.” 

“What does bloody Shakespeare have to do with anything?” I am losing my patience.

Moran doesn’t turn around, and appears unruffled by my hostility. “Haven’t you been paying attention, Doctor? You have put all the clues together, have made it this far, but you still haven’t stepped back and looked at the full picture.” 

I start pacing. This is hopeless. What is he on about? If the whole point was just to lure me here, why hasn’t he just had me killed yet? Why the big charade? 

Ok. Think, Watson. The only way to figure it all out is to play The Game. Hamlet. Hamlet was fighting his ultimate enemy, but Ophelia is caught in the crossfire, and she kills herself. Hamlet dies not long after that. Hamlet must represent... Sherlock, who killed Moriarty (or thought he did) but died in the process. And somehow, he was responsible for Harry’s death. 

“So, Harry represents Ophelia? Why the dramatics? Why not just tell me?” I keep pacing, frustrated.

Moran smiles. He is still not looking at me, yet he seems to read my thoughts. “She was in so much debt, and when she came here, I offered to help her. I told her that I could make it all go away, and that you would never know of her shame. But that it would cost her. She would have a choice. A choice I give to all of my... shall we say, associates. Work for me, or die.”

I stop short. I stare down at the Persian rug, at a particular square of pattern. There is roaring in my ears. 

He continues. I can practically hear that disgusting smile in his voice. “She joined my ranks. She worked for me without complaint for several weeks, sober even. But then one day, I wanted her to torture a little girl for me, for information.” He shrugs, as if he had only asked her to pick up eggs at the grocery. “She couldn’t handle it. She left the interrogation, and went straight to the nearest pub. She knew the rules. It wasn’t hard to have someone give her a little nudge over the edge. It wasn’t a suicide, even though they suspected it.” 

I am starting to shake with anger. Harry was sucked into Moran’s world, and she paid the ultimate price. I should have saved her. I should have known. “What does Sherlock have to do with it?”

“The recording, Doctor, remember? She asked him for help, but he refused. The coldhearted sociopath. She disgusted him. Probably reminded him of himself, from earlier days. And she was a distraction to you, taking your attention away from him. He might have even manipulated her out of sobriety to get her out of the way. He knew that she would have no choice but to come here, and he did not care. He was too obsessed with defeating Jim to give it a second thought. In essence, he let her die. To be, or not to be, isn't that the question?”

I look at him, disbelief gnawing at my stomach. My world is shattering around me. He turns around in his chair, those green eyes sparkling. I feel like I'm in a haze. Tears are starting to stream down my face. _Sherlock, Sherlock-- how could you? Are you truly that coldhearted? I... I believed in you. I trusted you._ I turn around, grasping at my hair, pacing, trying to understand.

“So you see, Doctor, you were right. In your story, Sherlock was Hamlet. But Harry wasn't Ophelia at all.”

He stands up, looking out the window but sauntering towards me at the same time. “That rain doesn’t seem to want to let up. Shall we go for a stroll anyway? Say, to the river?” And in one quick motion, before I have a chance to react, he pulls a syringe out of his sleeve and injects it into my arm.

* * *

I pause outside the building. The site of the former Globe Theatre, Shakespeare’s Theatre. The woman’s cryptic speech right before she died was the old motto of the Globe. I knew that Moran had a safehouse somewhere in this area, but had been unable to pinpoint the address.

Now it is an apartment building. Anchor Terrace. I know that Moran, Moriarty, or both, must be here. So close. So close to achieving my goal.

I hear footsteps approaching. “Showing your face, eh?” I turn around. Two men in dark suits with ear pieces. Mycroft. One of them, the one who spoke, is older and balding. The other one, blond, tall, haughty air, must be new. A bit of a chip on his shoulder at being paired with the veteran. 

“Tell Mycroft to stay out of this,” I say.  

“We're John’s detail.” The blond man says, ignoring me. They glance at each other. The balding man clears his throat. “He's usually completely unaware that we are following him. He went in there, hours ago, and hasn’t come out. No movement. Intel says this is just an ordinary building, but my... instinct... tells me something is wrong.”

“I would just like to add that I believe there'is no reason for alarm,” the younger man cuts in. “This is a residence, and there have been no signs of a struggle.” They glare at each other for a moment. Obviously, they have been arguing about this for hours.

John. John was here, hours ago. At Moran’s safehouse. What was he doing here? My heart starts beating more quickly than is really necessary. For the first time in a long time, I start to feel anxiety. Fear.

The older man clears his throat again, reaches in pocket for a lozenge. Smoker, 30 plus years. I should offer him a patch or two.  “When you have been doing this job as long as I have, Mr. Holmes, you have a sixth sense for such things. Even though MI5 says there is nothing amiss.”

I start pacing. MI5 is completely useless. This is a safehouse. Anyone can see that there are cameras everywhere. The underground schematics of this area show an unusually large matrix of tunnels and sewers radiating out from this point, so it is more than likely that they can come and go as they please without detection. In fact, the woman’s heels had traces of sewer water on them. John has most likely been smuggled out, if he is not being held captive inside. But to what purpose? As far as I know, Moran still thinks I'm dead. 

They both are staring at me. I don’t have time to explain. I have to find out what they have done with John. I take a piece of paper out of my pocket with my back to the building and scribble something down. Then I shake the balding man’s hand while slipping him the paper.

“I am going in. Alone. Tell Mycroft to bugger off.” 

I turn on my heel and head up to the buzzer. I have no idea which flat it is, so I hit all of them. Number five lights up. “Well hello, Mr. Holmes.” I can hear a sinister chuckle.

The buzzer sounds, and I go in. Number five is at the end of the hall, on the first floor. I quickly send a text, then stow my phone in my coat pocket. 

The door is ajar. I walk swiftly over to it, and pause at the entrance, peeking in. There are two chairs by a fireplace with a table between them, nothing else. No sign of Moran. I push the door in slowly, looking around. There is a door on the opposite end, and floor-to-ceiling windows on one side. Empty. I turn around, about go out into the hallway, when I hear him enter through the opposite door. I turn back slowly.

“We finally meet, Mr. Holmes.” Moriarty’s lieutenant has taken a page from his master’s book. Sleek black hair, tailored suit. But tall. Almost as tall as me. He smiles. Teeth glinting, sharp, like a predator. 

“Indeed. Mr. Moran, I presume.”

“Quite. You’re wearing your signature coat and scarf again, I see. I quite liked the ragged look, actually. So _derelicte_. Would you like some tea? I just made a fresh kettle. So much company today.” He walks over to the small table between the two chairs, pours two cups of tea, then sits down in one chair. “Please, sit.” He gestures to the other chair.

I walk over, slowly, and finally sit down. Every second ticking by that I don’t know John’s whereabouts is excruciating, but I have to play their game. There was a time when I enjoyed this as much as they do. But now, all I can think about is John.

“Milk? Sugar?”

“Two sugars.” He hands me the cup. I hold it, but I don’t drink. He starts to sip his (heavy milk, three sugars), and looks into the fireplace. 

“I have been waiting for this for some time, Mr. Holmes. You know, over the past few years, he would reminisce about you. I think he was actually a bit disappointed that you had really died. He had no one else at his level, to play with.” I can only assume that “he” is Moriarty. So he _is_ alive. I say nothing. 

“But then, you slipped. One day, a man you interrogated remembered you. We didn’t know for sure if it was you, of course. So I devised a treasure map of people for you to follow. It was quite complex, it took me some time.” He smirks, looking pleased with himself. “I had to make sure that it was intricate enough that only you could solve it, but that it would lead you right where we wanted. But we had to make it seem like we weren’t planting the trail, either. Jim loved that. It was almost like The Great Game, without the bomb-people of course. At least, not _people._ And with the same prize waiting at the end...” He smirks, as if laughing at a personal joke.

Finally I speak up. He could keep spewing this gibberish for hours if I let him. “I really would love to reminisce about the old days, but can we get to the point? That is, if you even have one?”

“Getting anxious, are we?” Moran sneers. “Fine, I’ll let Jim tell you the rest. All you have to do is follow the final clue.” He stops, and sips his tea, moving at a glacial pace. He is obviously enjoying this.

“You know, the Doctor really is quite fond of you. You should have seen his face when I showed him the video of you and Jim on the roof. I thought that he was going to fall apart at the seams.” He smiles again. Uncontrollable urge to dent in his teeth with my fist: rising. “And that was before I even told him about Harry.” He whistles, shaking his head. 

My phone pings. I ignore it.

“Do you want to get that?” I shake my head. He checks his watch. “Well I suppose there is no more reason to _resurrect_ the past.  So here you are: ‘ _There is a special providence in the fall of the sparrow_.’”

Just as he is lifting his cup to sip once more, four men burst through the windows and three more through each door. The cup and saucer smash on the floor. Armed Police. They surround Moran, easily capturing him. 

Outside, before I came in the Terrace, I had written on the note to the balding man: _Get backup. Moran inside. Need him alive. Will send location. Text me when ready._ I had brushed them off for the benefit of Moran’s cameras on the front of the building, so he thought he would be safe. Safe in the history of my arrogance, my self-reliance. But I have learned to use whatever resources I need, putting my pride aside if necessary. The authorities _can_ be useful, sometimes. I’m glad Mycroft can’t hear me say that.

But it almost seemed too easy for Mycroft’s men to subdue him, only two guards on the perimeter.  

I can’t think about that now.

I have to get to the pub. “There is a special providence in the fall of the sparrow.” Another quote from Shakespeare. I believe it’s _Hamlet._ About destiny, about being unable to avoid fate. The fall, death of a bird: me. And now resurrection. Death and fate. The Phoenix pub.  On the dead end of Serendipity Street. I just hope I'm not too late.

* * *

 

I run into the shabby building which houses the Phoenix. Empty. Over the crackling loudspeakers, “Staying Alive” is playing. Of course. Moriarty did always have a twisted sense of humor. I stride up to the man at the counter, about to threaten him to tell me Moriarty’s location. He simply hands me a phone and saunters back to the kitchen. The phone rings. I answer it, and slowly bring it to my ear.

“Sherly, I’m hoooome!” His singsong voice makes my stomach clench.

I exhale sharply. “Moriarty,” I say through gritted teeth.

“It’s _meeee_! What is the American expression? Long time no see! Well, I can see you, but you can’t see me. I thought it would be better this way, leave all the mess out of it. Ruined a perfectly good Westwood suit last time. But it was worth it, to see the look on your face when I pulled the trigger. BANG! Blank bullets can be so convincing.” He laughs. A camera on the opposite wall adjusts slightly. I glare at the lens. 

“It has been _so_ amusing, making you chase around Europe for the past few weeks. Just like old times! I had to distract you, keep you from figuring out what John was up to. But keep the mystery alive. I just about had you fooled, didn’t I? Sebastian did a fantastic job, planting all those people for you to find. I could just imagine you wondering: ‘Is he alive, or isn’t he?’ Look at the two of us, both rising from the grave. Like phoenixes from the ashes.” He chuckles.

“When did you know that I was alive?” 

“Honestly, I wasn’t _actually_  sure until now. I thought it might be one of your brother’s minions who was unbelievably good at covering his tracks, but extremely intent on rooting out every arm of my network. A few weeks ago, one of my, shall we say, pawns, awoke from what he thought was a drunken sleep. But after a few hours, he was able to piece together fractions of splintered memories: being injected with something, and then being interrogated by a tall, dark, curly-haired sociopath. It wasn’t a grand leap. So I had to test out the hunter, to see if he could decipher clues that only you could.”

“The coal miners. The woman’s heels. The quotes from Shakespeare. The Globe.” 

“Exactly. Ten points to Gryffindor!” he chortles. 

I pause, ignoring his sneer. “I have Moran.”

“Oh, I know, but he was a necessary sacrifice, to keep you guessing a little longer. And to keep you behind John. Like a chess game. I sacrificed my queen, to get yours. And now I have you in checkmate." 

“What does the game have to do with John? It’s between you and me.” My stomach feels strange. _A physical reaction to emotional stress?_

“Ah, it was too _easy_ , really. After you ‘died,’ he remained so loyal to you, to the memory of you. Never wavered from believing that you were genuine, unlike the rest of the world. But John is so _or-_ dinary, and ordinary people are so easy to manipulate. He is like a loyal dog. He feels responsibility for everything, and guilt! _Sooo_ much guilt. Guilt that he wasn’t able to stop you from killing yourself, for not being able to convince you that he still believed in you. Guilt for his alcoholic sister’s untimely death. All I had to do was nudge him into thinking that you had betrayed him by betraying her, and _eureka!_ For someone like John, collapsing the deep-seated trust at their very core is the only way to truly break them.”

“What was the point? Why do you think I care about him?” I keep my face impassive, my mouth set in a straight line.  

He simply laughs. “Who are you still trying to fool, me or yourself?” I don’t answer.

He sniggers.  I clench my jaw, imperceptibly. “I played him like a puppet. I left him a string of clues, making it seem like they were from you. Planting your phone where he would find it, leaving him a mysterious Shakespearean text from ‘you,’ leading him to your skull. Then to your old music collection. Then to more Shakespeare. All of it. He thought it would lead to a way to vindicate you, but instead it all lead to the idea that you had killed Harry. Well, not first-hand, of course, but that you could have saved her and chose not to, because it did not serve your ends. A true sociopath. Machiavellian to the extreme. How did you say it… ‘you can’t kill an idea’? Well I fostered that idea. I grew it. I nudged it. John was a- _dor_ -able, running around London, thinking that you had left clues to prove your innocence, or to find me. Until he found out the ‘truth,’ that you had the power to avert Harry’s death, and you did nothing. In fact, you chose to let her die. _Tsk, tsk._ Cold, Sherlock. I even made him watch the video of what happened on the roof that day, to show him that it was me all along. I left out the tiny detail that you jumped to save him. But that recording of the phone call between you and Harry was what sealed the deal. And it _destroyed his world_.” 

I start walking slowly across the room, towards the camera. “If you were just finishing what you started three years ago, why bother? Why not just kill him?”  If I can keep him talking, I might be able to figure out where the feed is transmitting to... or use this phone to pinpoint his location... but then I might never find out where John is. My stomach does that strange somersault again.

He chuckles menacingly. “Aye, there’s the rub! Do you remember what I said all those years ago? That I would I burn the heart out of you? Well, you don’t have one, not really. _John_ is your heart. He is the only thing tethering you to human emotion whatsoever. When you jumped off the roof to save him that day, you showed me your hand, your greatest weakness. Just like he did that night at the pool. Despite what you said on the roof, you are not me. _I_ would never die to save someone else. You and John are each other’s biggest pressure point. And you know how I _lovveee_ pushing people’s buttons.” 

“Why would you do all of this if you weren’t sure I was even alive?” I have almost crossed the room now. If I can get close enough to the camera, he won’t be able to see me text Mycroft in my coat pocket.

“Well, if you are going to be all _technical_ , it would have been pointless if you were truly dead. But it was good sport. It’s so _boorrrrinng_ being dead. Especially when I thought _you_ were dead. I waited for my enemies to grow lax, thinking they were free of me, then I would send in Moran to do my work for me. But there was no one left to truly play ‘the game’ with. And then, if it really was you, how else would I have ever gotten you to reveal yourself?” 

I have texted Mycroft, telling him to trace the call on this phone. I can’t stand it anymore. I have to ask the one thing he wants me to, to show that he has the upper hand. But I am running out of time. “Where is he? What have you done to John?”

He sounds gleeful. “Ah, Sherlock. I have done nothing to him. He is about to do it to himself. He is completely uninhibited. The interrogation serum you used, shall we say, _inspired_ me, so the decision will be easy for him. I’m sure that you are attempting triangulate the source of the call through that phone at this very second. But if you keep talking to me long enough to pinpoint my location, and try to find me, you will lose him. It will be too late. Remember the story of Ophelia? Well, your Ophelia is about to meet his watery grave. When the song ends, it will be over. Cheerio, Hamlet.”

Click. Dial tone. Panic. I yell into the phone, “Where?!? Where is he?? Moriarty!” 

The music over the speakers switches abruptly to children singing “London bridge is falling down.”

I throw down his phone and bolt out of the pub.  

* * *

 

I stare down at the Thames from the bridge. The rain is coming down in sheets. There is nothing left. All I was, all I had been, was based on my faith in you. And in the end, all you cared about was yourself. Harry was just a casualty. Unimportant, in comparison with your Great Game against Moriarty, not worth a second thought. I would have had the same fate, eventually, when I no longer served a purpose. Cast aside. _“You machine,”_ I said to you, that last time I saw you before the Fall. I had no idea how right I was. I shudder. 

Everything is blurry. Tears. Or raindrops. Both. I stare down at the river. The Thames is swollen from all the rain, and moving quickly. It won’t last long. I won’t have to think about this pain anymore, the pain I have lived in for two and a half years. I'll be in peace. “To sleep, perchance to dream.” Isn’t that Shakespeare? I do remember that much from primary school. Moriarty would have liked that. It fits into his perfect little plot, his story of the end of me.  

How did I get here? I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter. It will be over soon.

* * *

 

_John. Just hold on, a little longer. I'm coming. I will explain it all, I promise. Moriarty, Harry, all of it. Just hold on._

I'm racing down the street, calling Lestrade and telling him (rather, yelling over his idiotic stammerings that I'm alive), that there is a bomb threat to London Bridge and that everyone must be evacuated. “I don’t care if it is not your division, just do it! _Now_!” I yell, hanging up abruptly. 

No doubt Moriarty wants me to arrive just as John jumps, and the bomb will detonate, so I will die with him. He must have planned it all to the second. Just like John saw me before I jumped. It’s too symmetrical, too perfect. His taunts, the Shakespeare, chasing his men around Europe for years... it was all leading to this. 

Moriarty knew that the only way to truly kill me was to kill John. But he didn’t want to just hire a hitman, that would be too simple, too easy. He wanted to crush John, inch by inch, make him suffer. First, by giving him hope, then by taking it all away and more. He wanted to make John kill himself, because of me. And Moriarty knew, before he gave me the choice, that I would choose John over finding him. 

The story. Ophelia drowns herself in the river because of Hamlet’s betrayal. Hamlet’s anguish afterward, because he didn’t truly realize he had loved her until after her death.

He wanted me to realize... that I... but only when it is too late.  

I’m sprinting through the pouring rain. I know a shortcut that should get me there approximately 1.87 minutes earlier, enough time to get John clear. But it still feels slow, too slow. I'm almost on the bridge now. “London Bridge is falling down” is playing over some loudspeakers, but it sounds off, distorted. _When the song ends..._  

From the embankment, I see him. The police have cleared most of the bridge. He looks like he's falling asleep, leaning against a lamppost. _No. John!_ Is this how he felt when I was about to jump? I have never felt anything like it before. It’s like something with sharp claws is ripping my chest apart.

I am almost there. I shout his name. He doesn’t seem to hear, or he thinks it is his delusions again. He starts to step up on the edge. And then, a policeman stops me, saying that there's a bomb threat and that no one can enter the bridge. Someone shouts, and he turns his head.  He doesn’t see my right hook.

* * *

 

It has been several minutes. The dark water is silent. Even the rain makes no noise, melting into the river. Everything seems to be holding its breath. Inhale, exhale. It won’t take too long. Where is everyone? Oh, right. I am about to die. This is what it’s like when you die. You're utterly alone.

 _John! John! No!_ I hear you, screaming my name. I smile. My balance is off, and I almost fall in. It sounds like you are coming through a long tunnel. Even though you killed me, shattered my heart, I still feel glad that you will be with me in my final moments. That I won't be alone. I step forward.

Someone grabs me from behind and pulls me from the ledge. _No!_ I'm struggling, yelling. 

“John, John, you can’t, you don’t understand.” My god, the hallucination. Or am I dead already? I must be dead, because when I open my eyes, you are holding me, stroking my face, trembling, and tears are running down your face. This can’t be real. “Just hold on. I have to get you out of here.” I'm lifted up. Then I am flying over the ground. Strange.

“Sherlock. I’m dead. Thank god.” That was so fast. So painless. I don’t even remember drowning. I reach my hand up to touch your face. It feels so real. Those clear blue eyes. The curly dark hair. I drink you in like a man dying of thirst. I had never really believed in an afterlife, but this is…

“John. You aren’t dead. Neither am I. I stopped you from falling into the river. You will _not_ die, do you hear me?” I hear sirens in the background. Your breathing is heavy, like you are running.

“Sherlock, Harry. You… Harry.” I can’t seem to formulate the words. My tongue feels thick in my mouth. Being dead must make it harder to speak. 

Finally, I feel myself being lowered to the ground. You're cradling me in your arms. It’s so warm. I didn’t realize how cold I had been.

“Just hold on. Hold on, John. The ambulance is coming. What did they give you?” You are taking my pulse. Your voice sounds so far away. A tear rolls down your cheek, so slowly that it seems to take a lifetime, and falls on me. My eyes are getting heavy. I think I hear a childhood nursery song in the background, miles away. It’s like all the stars above are singing me to sleep. I feel your breath on my face. Surreal. How strange, what I hear and feel as I die. Nursery songs and your hands cradling my face. All the anger, all the pain is gone. 

“John, John! Stay awake!” You are shaking me. But the peacefulness is overwhelming. The world is going black. The sirens are getting closer. “Sherlock...” I can’t find words. Before everything completely ends, I feel your lips on mine, so soft. You whisper, “Don’t leave me, John. I promise I will never leave you again.” The music fades away. In the ensuing silence, the breeze sighs. 

Then the world explodes. 

* * *

 

I open my eyes and quickly shut them. The light is blinding.  

Memories from right before I blacked out punch me in the stomach. You, holding me. Your eyes, luminous, above me, tears filling them.  Your coat around me, sheltering me from the rain. Why? Why did I have to have a hallucination of you, right before I was going to die? It's too cruel. 

Slowly, I open my eyes again. I squint against the light. The world is fuzzy around the edges. There you are again. Sitting in the corner. Head in your hands, slumped over. I must have sustained brain damage. The vision is so strong.

“Nurse? Nurse.” I call out. You raise your head and look at me, confused. A nurse comes in. “I think I might need more medication. Or maybe less.” I croak. “I am hallucinating that my dead flatmate is sitting in that chair.” She looks at me incredulously, then looks at Sherlock.

“I’ll take it from here,” you say. She nods curtly, and walks out. 

I gape at you. She saw you, she heard you speak. _You... aren’t a hallucination?_ I blink, holding my eyes closed for a little, then reopen them. You're still there. Sitting in the chair, elbows on your knees, dark suit a little loose, catlike eyes a little sunken and with dark circles. My hallucination of you never looked sleep deprived. Or so starved. 

“I'm not a hallucination, John.” 

“I’m starting to get that,” I croak.

I feel the world spinning. I can’t believe this. I was about to kill myself, fall into the trap Moriarty had laid for me. I had fallen into his web. And now, I'm still alive, and so are you. _How?_ You walk over and sit in another chair next to my bed, taking my hand in both of yours. I can feel it, it’s real. Bony. _Have you been eating?_ I blink, staring at the hands. Everything still seems surreal, out of context. I am worrying about whether you are eating, when you can’t possibly be alive. I feel like I'm hyperventilating. 

“Breathe, John. They flushed out your system, but the dosage was too strong. You could have died even if you hadn’t jumped. You are still weak. The smoke from the explosion didn’t help either.” 

“Explosion?” My throat grates. They must have intubated me at some point. I concentrate on breathing deeply.

“London Bridge. It... fell down.” The edge of your mouth twitches. “No one was hurt, Lestrade evacuated everyone in time. Moriarty had coal miners dig holes in the columns and fill them with explosives without ruining the structural integrity, so no one knew. They have been there for some time.”

I shake my head to clear it. This is too strange. _London Bridge. Fell down. Sherlock is back from the dead_.

One thing at a time. “But...why?” 

“Moriarty wanted to make sure that I would die at the same time I tried to save you, and if I was too late, or if you had second thoughts, you would die anyway. A contingency plan. Mostly, I think he just always had a twisted desire to make the nursery rhyme come true. You know how he likes to breathe life into fairy tales.” 

Everything seems so confusing. “What did Moran inject me with? I don’t even remember getting to the bridge.” 

You nod. “It seems to have made you feel less... inhibited. It has about ten times the effect of several drinks of alcohol. So you were feeling everything times ten, a hundred, including... wanting to die. It was a distortion of a truth serum I used to interrogate Moriarty’s henchmen.” You look at me intently. Those eyes are intoxicating.

I pause a moment, still in shock. The wheels in my head are turning, trying to put the other pieces of the puzzle together. There are so many things to say, so many things to ask you that I don’t know where to begin. My brain is still fuzzy. Like a few days ago, after I had too much to drink... the effects feel so similar. "The serum. Did you inject me with it before? The night I went to the pub with Molly?” 

You smile, but the smile doesn’t reach your eyes. “Yes. I wanted to find out what Moriarty’s men had planted on you, but you didn’t tell me about the phone. I had adjusted the serum to keep you conscious longer, but it made the truth extraction less effective. You kept... asking about the blood on the roof. I knew you were getting closer to something, but I had no idea that it would be this.” 

“Wait, the bloke who bumped into me in the pub-- was that _you_? It looked nothing like you.” 

“It was. I had to inject you without you noticing. And once you were drugged, you wouldn’t remember me. Or you weren’t supposed to. My serum apparently needs to be adjusted again.” You frown, looking like you are calculating figures and densities in your head. 

I snort. “Sherlock Holmes. Did you _roofie_ me?” I start laughing uncontrollably despite the pain. _Must be the meds._ You laugh too, shaking your head. But soon, my laughter dies down, and I realize the implications of it all.

“I... I thought it was a hallucination. It was all real? You... were right there? I touched you, and I never knew? What about all those other times I thought I saw you, people who looked like you?” My eyes are welling up. _Bloody meds. My moods are like quicksilver._ “I thought I was going insane.” Your mouth twists in a way I have never seen before, like you are in pain. 

“I have been seeing you, all this time, all over London. And you were alive. You lied to me, let me suffer..." tears start to spill over, and I turn to look away. I pull my hand from yours, and cover my face. I can feel the anger starting to swell, clearing the fog in my head. 

“I know. I never thought it would take this long. John, you have to let me explain.” Your voice sounds hesitant. This conversation is obviously not going the way you wanted it to. 

“Was it all a _game_ to you? Playing with me, letting me think you were dead, trying to see how long it would take me to crack? Some sick experiment? Like at Dartmoor?” I feel nauseated, remembering how you locked me in the lab at Baskerville. Like an animal. 

“No, no! John, of course not. I had to do it, surely you see that?” You sound worried now. Upset. Good. 

But there’s something even worse than all of that. I turn my head to look at you. You flinch, seeing my glare.

“Harry.” That’s all I need to say.  

You steel yourself. “I know what he told you, John, but it's not true. She came to the flat one day while you were out, looking for you. So she told me everything-- about her debt, falling off the wagon after she split with Clara, everything. I gave her money, but it wasn’t enough. Later, she called me because the sharks were circling. Moran saw the perfect opportunity to pull her in. Told her that he would cancel her debt if she worked for him. It must be how he recruits his pawns. I tried to help her, despite what he made you believe. And then, I knew you were in so much pain after her death. I didn’t dare come near you, because I didn’t want Moran to realize that I was still alive. Much good it did me,” you add bitterly. 

I don’t want to hear this. Your excuses. “I heard the recorded phone call. You told her that ‘she knew where to go.’ You sent her to Moran. You’re a sociopath. A machine. You didn’t care about Harry, you don’t care about me.” I am almost taken aback at my own vitriolic words. They sound like someone else is saying them. Someone with so much anger in them that they could burst. 

Your shoulders slump (I have never seen you do that before), and you look at the floor. “I know you must think that. But it’s not true.”

“Prove it,” I spit bitterly. 

You look up, and I gasp. In one moment, I see a universe of pain in your eyes, that same pain that I saw that night at the pool, magnified by thousands, millions. Pain that you masterfully hide behind a mask of indifference. You carefully take my hand again. “I do care about you, John, more than I ever thought I was capable of. I would never have wanted something to happen to Harry, because it would hurt you. I knew she was back on the bottle, and I tried more than once to get her to go to a rehabilitation center. That’s what I was talking about in the recording. In the end, it had to be her decision, and she chose wrong. And I faked my death to save you. Moriarty told me that if I didn’t jump, his hitmen would shoot you, Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade on sight. And I had to stay dead, in order to protect you.”

I was not ready for such a declaration. I don’t know what to say. I just stare at you, still not sure if I believe you. I think back to footage of the roof... that would explain why they showed it to me with no sound. So that I couldn’t hear what he was threatening you with, and why you jumped. And it does explain everything about Harry. But I still don’t know if I can forgive... everything.

“Who else knew you were alive? Mycroft?”

“Mycroft, yes. And Molly. She had to declare me dead. She helped me create the illusion.” You watch me carefully, like you are waiting for my anger to boil over again.

And it does. “Mycroft? And Molly? You told _Molly_ , but not me? All this time, she lied to my face, when she could see that I was... I can’t believe this. No, stop.” I see you about to answer me, but I cut you off, holding up my hand.

“How?” I choke out. “How did you fake your death? You must have planned it all out for days. And when you called me, it sounded like you were about to die. You were... I could hear your hopelessness.” _You liar._  

You stand up and start pacing around the room like a caged animal. “It was an illusion. 'Smoke and mirrors,' is the expression, I believe. And cadavers. I chose the location to meet Moriarty so that it would all be in place. Remember how I didn’t want you to see me from a certain angle? It had to be real to you, you had to believe it. It was a risk, and I honestly wasn’t sure if it was going to work, whether I would survive, so yes, the phone call was...emotive.” You clear your throat. _Keep your eyes fixed on me. Stay exactly where you are._ Of course. So I would see only what you wanted me to see.

“I felt your wrist, there was no pulse. They pulled me away before I could really examine you.”

“My homeless network made up the ‘bystanders.’ They got you away from me before you could see that I was still alive. Right before I called you, I injected myself with a drug to slow my pulse far below average. That very well could have killed me too if Molly hadn’t acted in time.” You stop, looking at me intently. I don’t say anything, so you continue. 

“You were so adamant that I wasn’t a fake, it was hard to follow through with the charade.  Because I knew I was causing you pain. I will explain it all. But you must promise me, John. You must promise me never, ever to do something like you did today again. I thought I was going to lose you.” 

My mouth sets in a grim line. “It hurts, doesn’t it? Watching your best friend, or flatmate, or whatever we are, kill himself in front of your eyes?” 

You shut your eyes tightly, running a hand through your already-messy curls. Your hair is sticking up everywhere. “I know. It was the only way, don’t you see? I had to do it. I had to be dead, so I could hunt my enemies without fearing for your life. I caught Moran, but Moriarty escaped me again. But none of that would matter, if you had…” you trail off. You come back to my bedside.

Your forehead furrows. You take my hand again. “I did come and see you, sometimes. Normally wearing a disguise. I told myself that was just ascertaining whether your physical and mental state was deteriorating. It was rare, but yes, I was there. And you seemed to be handling everything, considering.”

I stare at you. My mouth opens, closes. I can’t seem to find any words. When I do, I practically whisper, because it feels like there is a knot in my throat. “Are you bloody well telling me that you thought I was _all right? You_ of all people? Well I was _not_ all right, Sherlock. I fell apart. There was nothing left of me. Couldn’t you see that? You, the most brilliant and observant man I have ever met, and you couldn’t see it?” Tears start to well up again, but I don’t know if they're from anger, residual grief, or both. My breathing is ragged.

You don’t say anything. Instead, you close your eyes and bow your head down to touch my hand with your forehead. Such a simple, human gesture, something that a loved one would do to another, but so completely unexpected from Sherlock Holmes that it takes my breath away. Your shoulders tremble slightly. I realize in one moment that you're telling me the truth. That you really did everything to save my life. That you didn’t carelessly throw Harry to the dogs. _Why would I ever have believed Moran’s word over yours?_  

“I believe you,” I manage to choke out, and use my free hand to brush some of the long curls away from your eyes. You look up quickly, with tears rolling down your cheeks, and you see my face. That I mean it. The rest of my anger dissipates. “About Harry, Moriarty, all of it. I believe you.” Your face relaxes in relief. I have never seen you cry like this before. Completely stripped of your mask, raw. If I needed more proof that you were telling the truth, that you are not a sociopathic machine, this was it. And I know that you have never let anyone else see this side of you.

“I need to tell you something else.” For some reason it seems important. "You know, all those times I said I ‘saw’ you-- most of the time wasn't just a vision of you, or a memory. You would say things to me in my head, as if you were beside me, trying to help me figure everything out. Like you were still really there. It's almost as if I knew, deep down, that you would come back someday. That you were never really gone."

Your eyes soften around the edges. We look at each other for a few minutes (or longer, it’s hard to say). Finally, I break the silence.

“My god, the violin.” You raise your eyebrows, surprised by my non sequitur. But I am fitting everything together now, it is all making sense. “I saw the violin was missing, and I never realized. All those notes, clues from Moriarty-- they were just distractions, and I never realized what was right in front of my face. You took your violin with you.”

“Yes, John, I took the violin a few months later, the only thing I removed from 221B. I had to be able to order my thoughts somehow. I never thought you would realize it, and not for a moment that you would think I was alive because of it.” You smile sadly. Unbidden, visions rise before my eyes of you playing, in some dark corner of the world, all alone. Near a window, looking out on a foreign city, playing the sweetest and most devastating music in the world. Playing your sorrow. A melody that encompassed our separation, our mutual loss.

I bite my lip. It feels like there is nothing left to say. Except...

“Can I ask you something?” I say, looking away, feeling a little embarrassed, though I am not sure why. I see you nod your head once out of the corner of my eye. “When I was on the bridge-- when you had gotten me clear. Erm. When I was about to go unconscious…” I don’t know how to finish the sentence. 

“Yes.” 

“Yes, what?” 

“Yes, I kissed you.”  You say it so matter-of-factly and with such a straight face that I burst out laughing again, which hurts my throat. You stay impassive, but some pain creeps back into those astounding eyes.

“Why is that funny?”

“It’s not, the way you said it was,” I croak, still laughing, gasping for air. “As if it were the most natural thing in the world.”

“Well, it was, to me,” you say, carefully. I want to laugh again, but I am too hypnotized by the look on your face. Like I am the only thing in existence. I realize that I have completely forgiven you, despite all the pain you put me through. And I always would have. _My Sherlock._  

I had always known that our-- relationship? friendship?-- was different, that it was not easily categorized. People would always assume that we were together, and I would always loudly protest it. We were a unit, Sherlock-Holmes-and-John-Watson, more than friends, more than colleagues, but that was all. I would say that I'm not gay. And I’m not. I am not against it, I have just never felt that way about a man. There were little stolen moments, of course, times when I felt... something. Something different. Sitting in the cab, laughing over the stolen ashtray from Buckingham. That night in Dartmoor, when I saw true vulnerability in your eyes, fear. How you told me later that you didn’t have “friends,” you just had one. You grabbing my hand as we ran from Lestrade. 

Irene Adler asked if I was jealous, a smug look on her face, when you seemed heartbroken at her “death.” _“We are not a couple,”_ I had said. _“Yes, you are,”_ she replied amusedly. I had never thought anything would come of it. But then, I have never felt like my heart was ripped from my chest like it did when you fell. I have never felt like that about anyone, let alone some woman I was dating. I never saw anyone after The Fall. There was no point. My heart was gone. _Of course I couldn’t love someone else when you were gone._

I smile slightly, realizing it fully. _I love you, and only you. I have forever. How did I not realize it?_

“I wish I knew what you were thinking, right now,” you say. Your eyes are scrutinizing me, trying to find any detail about my expression to use for a deduction.

I chuckle. “Sherlock Holmes, unable to deduce someone’s train of thought? The world must have stopped turning on its axis. It does that, you know,” I joke. 

“John.” You are scrutinizing me. You want to know what I am thinking. What is that in your eyes, fear? _Oh, you are worried that I didn’t want you to kiss me?_

I close my eyes, so that I can put my thoughts together. If there were ever a time for declarations, this was it. But I don't wan't to scare you off, either. “I was just thinking, that I have never felt about anyone the way I do about you. Man or woman. You have no idea, but when you were gone, the world was empty. My heart had been ripped out of my chest. It was like I died with you. I was in limbo, living in a haze, and the bridge… was just a natural progression of that, even without what happened to Harry. Moriarty knew just how to push me over the edge, so to speak. If you had never fallen, we might have just been flatmates forever, and I never would have realized it. But, when you kissed me on the bridge,” I clear my throat slightly, “it was if my heart was placed back in my chest, and started beating again for the first time in more than two years. And I finally woke up from a perpetual nightmare of a world where you didn’t exist.” I clear my throat again and open my eyes.

You are still looking straight at me. You don’t look as tired, as worn, as you did a moment ago.  You hesitate, as if you are not sure what to say. Your pupils are dilated. Sherlock, at a loss for words, unraveled. _Because of me?_ I smile. _I could get used to this._

You take a breath, looking at my hand between yours.

“You know, John, I would make excuses to come back and see you. It was not just because I wanted to check on you, Mycroft sent me reports. I wanted to _see_ you. You were right. I should have seen that you were not all right, but I know now that when it comes to you my empirical brain is... unreliable. Moriarty knew that. I can look at a person and deduce their story in ten seconds, but I couldn’t see myself. Moriarty realized before I did that I was capable of having a heart. And, as he so aptly put it, he knew that to burn my heart, he had to burn _you_. You are my heart. He tried to destroy me through destroying my reputation, and I let him, because it was the only way to save you. That’s why he went through the whole charade of Hamlet and Ophelia. He dangled you on a string to draw me out. To make me realize that I... what I didn’t think I was capable of, ever... and then you...” you shudder. This is obviously hard for you, so I squeeze your hand. I can feel my pulse increasing as you speak. Surely you can feel it too. I put my other hand on your face, and you raise your gaze to me.

Seeing my expression seems to give you courage. “There was a time when I would have run in the opposite direction from this kind of ‘sentiment,’ because I thought it was a characteristic of the losing side. I can no longer stay completely detached like Moriarty. And in the end, I lost ‘the game’ because of it. I lost to my greatest enemy, and he is still out there. But I don’t care. He gave me a choice, at a crucial moment: to find him, or save you. I didn’t hesitate to let him go. If I had won against Moriarty and you had died, that would have been no victory at all.”  You pause again, weighing your words. “I don’t care about labels-- ‘flatmates, best friends, or whatever.’ I know that may matter to you, so we can discuss it.  I never knew what it meant to ‘love,’ and it never really seemed to matter before. But when you were about to jump, I felt like I was dying too.  More than I did on the roof. I have no data to compare this with, but you are what makes me whole, and if that’s not love, then what is?”

You pause once more, and smile. I smile back, my whole chest swelling, feeling like it could burst. 

“But I do know one thing for certain. I know that this is the most natural thing I could ever do.”  And with that, you lean down and kiss me again. 

It does feel like the most natural thing in the world, like your lips were meant to be on mine. Your lips are so soft. I am not surprised. It’s like I had known all along that they would be, even though the rest of your body is so angular. There is something wet sliding down my cheeks. Your tears or mine? Tears of joy. Your mess of dark curls brushes my forehead. My hand is still on your face, my thumb skimming your cheekbone, your alabaster skin. I can feel your heart beating in sync with mine.   


You don’t kiss me long, just enough, as if you are saying: “You are mine.”  

And I am. I always have been.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 END OF PART I


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